


These are the Days like Crazy Rain

by throwupsparkles



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BDSM, Dom/sub, Idiots in Love, Lack of Communication, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Power Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:01:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 52,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25684702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/throwupsparkles/pseuds/throwupsparkles
Summary: Gerard knows that that’s why this works. Whatever it is that Frank and Gerard are, it works because they’re both trying to escape. They probably shouldn’t work, a lot of people think that they’re crazy for doing what they’re doing.“No,” Mikey would say, “You’re crazy because you’re not doing it correctly.”
Relationships: Frank Iero/Gerard Way
Comments: 172
Kudos: 200





	1. Chapter 1

Sometimes Gerard thinks he’s just woken up from a five year nap.

He gets so disoriented, especially in moments like these where he’s standing in a gross venue holding a diet soda and watching Frank roll around on stage like he’s fucking his guitar. He doesn’t know how he got here. It feels like just yesterday he was at SVA, working on his portfolio for the hypothetical future. He was drinking shitty beer with Mikey in the basement whispering dreams that they were too scared to admit to anyone else. And now he was in it. He was in that future that he and Mikey had planned under the blanket of Bowie singing to them, drowning out their apprehensions. But this doesn’t look like anything he had planned. 

He did not plan on being in the later half of his twenties watching his, well Frank, whatever he was, play in front of a bunch of college kids that were still dreaming and planning their futures. Gerard always feels bitter when he comes out to Frank’s shows. He hates watching these kids bounce around with all this energy that Gerard seems to have lost. He hates that they can chug back beer like it means nothing, because it probably doesn’t. At least to them.

Gerard makes an apologetic face towards the stage even though Frank won’t notice and goes outside to breathe. 

Gerard pulls out his phone and a cigarette. He lights it while he waits for Mikey to answer. 

“Time?” Mikey croaks.

“Uh, it’s only ten?”“That’s three in the morning here, jackass,” Mikey grumbles, but Gerard hears shuffling and a muffled voice, Pete’s probably. Or maybe it was Gabe’s. Gerard isn’t really sure who Mikey is seeing anymore. 

“Sorry,” Gerard winces, “I forgot you were in London.”

“S’okay,” Mikey says, and he sounds a little more awake, but his voice is tight like the exhaustion still has it’s hold on him.

“How’s tour?” Gerard asks.

“No, we’re not doing that,” Mikey says, “Why’d you call? Are you at a bar again?”

“Yeah.”“Did you get one of your gross fake cocktails?”“It’s a college bar.”“So?”

“So the goth girl behind the bar really scared me.”

Mikey snorts, “Ok. Are you outside?”

“Yeah.”

“But it still smells like alcohol, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Go home, Gee,” Mikey says gently.

Gerard sighs and flicks ash onto his shoes. “Frank.”

“He’ll understand. He always does.”

“Yeah, but tonight was important to him.”

“They’re always important. There will be more shows.”

“I just hate that--”

“Stop,” Mikey says firmly, “Keep me on the phone until you get home.”

Gerard smiles a bit. He sets his soda on one of the tables on the patio and takes off down the street. There was a time where Mikey would be walking next to him. But, that was before Mikey found a job that actually fulfilled him and let him travel far away from his Jersey basement. That was before Gerard pushed Mikey away with his drinking and obnoxious behavior. Mikey was his partner in crime until he couldn’t handle it anymore. When he couldn’t handle Gerard anymore.

It’s why he keeps Gerard at phone call distance now. 

He can hear Mikey moving through the condo he’s in. Hears the slide of a balcony door and then wind rushing into the phone. 

“Cold there?” Gerard asks. 

“It’s always cold here,” Mikey replies. 

Mikey took Gerard to London with him once. It was a fucking nightmare. Mostly because Gerard kept having to squeeze into the small airport bathroom and hyperventilate in between throwing up. 

But then once they landed, Gerard just couldn’t adjust. It’s not like there’s a huge cultural difference between London and Jersey, well sorta, but it was more that he didn’t feel like he belonged in this part of Mikey’s life. The part where Mikey spent a good chunk of the year in London working with the label to bring in up and coming bands in the scene. The part of Mikey's life where he was happy with a job that made him want to actually get out of bed in the morning. 

“Did you go to that sandwich place yet?” Gerard asks, “The one with the grumpy cook?”

Mikey laughs breathy, and Gerard can imagine the cigarette smoke leaking from his grin. “No, I literally just landed yesterday. I’ve been trying to readjust my sleep schedule, which, thanks, Asshole.”

“I’m sorry,” Gerard mumbles, kicking a rock down the sidewalk. 

“No, no,” Mikey breathes, “Fuck, you’re really in it tonight, huh?”

“Sorta,” Gerard admits. 

“What’s going on? Is it just tonight, or is work getting to you?”

“Work always gets to me,” Gerard points out, tossing his spent cigarette and lighting another. 

“Yeah, but it usually doesn’t have you in knots like this,” Mikey says, “Usually you just call me a bitch when I call you asshole, it’s our thing.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Gerard huffs, “I don’t know, Mikes. Sometimes it just gets to be too much.”

“You work it out with Frank?”

“Christ, Mikes, I’m not talking to you about that.”

“You have before.”

“Yeah, because you’re a nosy little shit,” Gerard says, but he’s grinning. It almost feels like Mikey is back home and they’re bickering in their mom’s kitchen over flat soda. 

“Are you still working on that comic you told me about?” Mikey asks softly. 

Gerard shrugs, and he knows that Mikey can’t see him, but also knows that Mikey can read his silence. 

“You took this mind numbing job to get ahead in comics,” Mikey reminds him, “Not to give up on them.”

It was sorta hard to focus on his own artwork when he was bogged down with assignments to trace other people’s work at Cartoon Network. He sat in a small cubicle in the middle of the office layout, so it wasn’t like he even had a view of the window to drift off at. It felt like his grey carpeted cardboard walls were closing in on him and no matter how many photos of him and Mikey he tacked on the walls, no matter how many X-Men action figures or novelty coffee mugs from Frank that he set out on his desk, it didn’t feel like his. It felt like he was dying a little inside every day. 

Which made it really difficult to want to pick up a pen when he got home. Instead he would sit on the couch and zone out to the television until his stomach grumbled loud enough for him to pick up the phone and order enough takeout that would last him through tonight’s dinner and tomorrow’s lunch. 

Gerard can’t remember the last time he went grocery shopping for actual meals. 

“Almost home?” Mikey asks. 

“Yeah,” Gerard answers, he can see his apartment from where he is on the street. 

“Ok,” Mikey says softly, “I can stay on until Frank comes by if you want. You can put on a movie and tell me what’s going on.”

Gerard snorts. “I think I’ll be ok,” he says, it’s not that bad of a night. 

“Ok,” Mikey says again, but it’s like he’s not sure, “Text Frank so he knows no one kidnapped you.”

“Who would kidnap me?” Gerard says, unlocking his door. 

“People who get off on your mismatched socks and self-deprecating humor?” 

“Hm,” Gerard says, tossing his keys on the counter, “I don’t think there’s anyone out there with that particular kink.”

"I know of one,” Mikey replies. 

*

He feels Frank crawl into bed and Gerard sits up a little, only to have Frank press him gently back down. “Go back to sleep,” he whispers.

“Sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” Frank says, and Gerard can hear him kicking off his jeans. He feels the slide of the blanket shifting on his own bare thighs, then there’s warmth and a minty Frank huddled against him. Gerard used to be put off that Frank felt that he had to drown the smell of beer out of his mouth with every oral hygiene product that Gerard owned. But on nights like these where the craving is pulling at him, he finds comfort in the little safety nets that Frank sets out. 

“Where are you at?” Gerard murmurs, reaching out to pull Frank’s head against his chest. Frank sinks into his bones and turns his head to kiss Gerard’s sternum. 

“Four.”

Gerard hums, four is a lot better than where Frank had been earlier today. “Yeah, you were a little wild up there tonight.”

Frank huffs a laugh, “Needed to get out of my head for a bit.”

Gerard knows that that’s why this works. Whatever it is that Frank and Gerard are, it works because they’re both trying to escape. They probably shouldn’t work, a lot of people think that they’re crazy for doing what they’re doing. 

“No,” Mikey would say, “You’re crazy because you’re not doing it correctly.”

Gerard’s not really a conversational guy, and neither is Frank which makes things a little sticky. He knows, Gerard fucking knows, that they should have talked things out before they whipped out the handcuffs and floggers, but things sort of just got out of hand. And it wasn’t like they were being reckless, they did the safeword thing and they talked about the obvious stuff. The “does your bad day need to be spanked out of you or do you just need a hot bath” kind of conversations. 

But they don’t talk about the feelings stuff. The stuff that Mikey got scared of for Gerard. Things like what tying Frank up was doing to Gerard’s heart, or how Gerard got clingy after a scene. 

“It’s very cathartic,” Gerard had told Mikey, “It’s normal to be a little cuddly.”

Mikey just shot him a look. “I’m not bashing what you do in the bedroom, I’m concerned about what’s going on with you guys outside of the bedroom.”

“We don’t always fuck in the bedroom,” Gerard pointed out and Mikey threw his hands up in the air dramatically. And everyone thought that Gerard was the dramatic brother. 

But Gerard knows what Mikey means. Frank and Gerard aren’t technically together. Sometimes Frank takes someone home from wherever his band is playing and Gerard pretends that he has this girl he’s been seeing, Jennifer. The problem is that he hasn’t seen Jennifer since he was in college, but Frank doesn’t need to know that. 

And they don’t really go out on dates or whatever. They’ll sit in Gerard’s living room and watch cooking shows while they eat take out. Frank asks him to come to every one of his shows, and for the most part Gerard comes. They both have keys to each other’s places and Gerard calls Frank’s mom “mom”, but that’s mostly because she insisted after Frank brought Gerard over for Sunday night dinner. 

It’s a weird dance that they do, but it works for them. Gerard didn’t think anyone could fill that hole in his chest that he used to try and drown with whatever he could get his hands on at parties or in bars. And it’s not that...Gerard’s not sure if Frank is filling that void in his heart or just making him forget that it’s there. Mikey’s probably right, that there’s still something missing because they’re not talking. Even if Frank said he didn’t want to do the whole relationship thing, at least Gerard would get closure. But he can’t help but think that would sorta put a damper on getting slapped in the face by Frank while he was handcuffed. He’s not sure if it would change his perspective. He likes letting his mind slip into the mindset that Frank’s got him, and he’s got Frank. That they’re safe. Even if they’re not sane. 

“Gee, sleep,” Frank says in that tone that sends electricity down his spine. 

Gerard weaves his fingers into Frank’s grown out black hair, tugging a little. He grins when he hears Frank’s sharp inhale. He likes this about them too. This power struggle that doesn’t feel like a struggle at all. 

It’s another thing that shouldn’t work. 

It wasn’t like they were both in the community or anything. Well, Frank had gone to a few parties in the scene, enough to be more knowledgeable than Gerard. But Gerard knew enough to know that the fact they didn’t follow the whole dom/sub labels was odd. 

Frank leans up and brushes a soft kiss against his lips. “Seriously, go to sleep. I can hear you thinking.”

Gerard sighs and looks over at the clock sitting on his nightstand. It’s two in the morning, which means it’s probably still too early to call Mikey. That and he already woke him up once tonight, but he just can’t turn his head off tonight. He gets like this when he goes to Frank’s shows sometimes. He gets too in his head about nostalgia and things that could have been but didn’t. He thinks about the beers he could have been drinking if he wasn’t so fucked in the head. Could have been in the pit and getting lost in Frank’s music if he wasn’t so weirded out with being close to strangers like that. Thinks that he could have been someone that Frank would actually want to date if

Frank gets up and Gerard sits up. “Where--”

“Hush,” Frank says, but it’s soft like he’s trying to soothe Gerard instead of putting him in his place. 

Frank rummages through Gerard’s closet before coming back with a thick piece of cloth and the padded handcuffs. 

“I’m too tired to--”, Gerard starts. 

“It’s not a scene,” Frank says, sitting on the bed. “Arms out,” he instructs gently. 

Gerard’s arms extend without thought. This is what being with Frank is like, it’s like he can just flip a switch in Gerard’s mind. This is what he tries to explain to Mikey, that this _helps_ so much he could cry sometimes.

Frank secures his wrists in the padded cuffs then lets them fall on the bed. He doesn’t have the chain to link them together or lock him to the headboard, but the weight of them against his wrists is nice. It’s secure, grounding, like he’s being held into his body instead of floating into his thoughts. 

Frank wraps the blindfold around Gerard’s eyes and pulls tight. “Too tight?”

“S’fine,” Gerard whispers. 

Being blindfolded isn’t one of Gerard’s favorites, but it does the trick real quick which is probably why Frank chose it tonight. It does one of two things. Either it makes Gerard stay inside himself and examine all the icky bits or whatever is bothering him instead of getting distracted by what Frank is doing in a scene. Or, it makes Gerard give up all sense of control and slip into becoming totally dependent on Frank. 

Most likely it’s the latter tonight. Gerard feels Frank slip back in bed and pull Gerard down on the bed, turning him so that he’s on his side with his back to Frank’s chest. 

“Where are you?” Frank breathes. 

“Six,” Gerard admits. 

“Color?”

“Green.”

Frank kisses the back of his neck and wraps his arms around his waist. “Inhale.”

Gerard does, slowly because Frank would just make him try again if he breathed in sharply like he usually does. But the wrist cuffs and the blindfold are starting to pull him to that headspace. The roaring of the cravings from the bar and the self hatred that always followed are dulling to a faint whisper.

“Exhale.”

And then they’re silent. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So some version of this fic has been kicking around in my brain for a bit now. And it's kinda hard to explain or put tags on it, so I have things pretty vague I think. It's a BDSM fic for sure, but not everything about their BDSM lifestyle is going to be sexual. Sorta like what went down in this chapter. If you all want me to add more detailed tags as I go through chapters let me know, I'll for sure tag anything or give a warning in the notes section if I think anything might be triggering. It's really just a fic about two fucked up dudes trying this out because it helps for the time being. Expect lots of fumbling and figuring stuff out, lots of them avoiding talking about their feelings, and a nice dollop of pinning. 
> 
> In my last fic, I always ended a chapter with a rec. [Soup](https://archiveofourown.org/works/281521) is a really short and sweet sick!fic with the Way Bros taking care of Frank. Really cute and the podfic is great too!


	2. Chapter 2

As chaotic as Gerard is, he likes his morning routine. It helps ease him into the day and, as Mikey likes to point out, it lets him procrastinate going into work. Though Gerard would argue that it’s not really procrastinating if he still gets to work on time every morning. 

Either way, he likes to spend the first few minutes after he’s woken up just sitting in his bed and staring off at the wall while his alarm plays whatever song he’s been into. Lately it’s been the newest single from one of Mikey’s bands. They’re not bad, a little more Midwestern emo than he would probably like, but he likes that the lyrics are very story driven. He doesn’t think that music these days really cares about stories anymore. 

And then, once he gets himself out of bed, he’ll head into the bathroom and after brushing his teeth he’ll stand in front of the closet as if he doesn’t already know he’ll put on black jeans because they sorta resemble business casual and then whatever button down doesn’t look too wrinkly. He’ll go into the kitchen and pack away whatever leftovers he has from the previous night. Then he'll pour some coffee into his traveler’s mug that he has programmed to brew every morning. 

He’ll step outside with his bag and coffee, light a cigarette, then will drive to the train station to herd into the city with the masses. When he first started his job, he would try to draw on the train, back when he could hardly get out of his sketchbook. Now he usually settles in with whatever playlist Mikey has made him or an audiobook that Frank has told him about. Sometimes he veers off and will find a DnD podcast that makes him feel like he’s back in high school DMing with his friends. Friends who have all drifted off to become adults. 

Gerard really doesn’t understand how being twenty-seven makes him anymore of an adult than when he was seventeen. There’s days where he wakes up and thinks that he’s back home and his mom is going to come into his room at any moment to tell him he’ll be late for the bus. But it’s always quiet, and then he’ll remember that he’s alone in his apartment. And that there’s unopened bills on his counter that he’s too scared to open. His fridge is empty and none of his socks match anymore. Oh, and he doesn’t have any extra sets of sheets. Because apparently adults are supposed to have multiple sets of sheets. 

“Hey,” Frank murmurs, nuzzling against his cheek. 

Frank always disrupts his morning routines, so much so that when they first started this Gerard stopped letting him sleep over. But then he got sad when Frank would leave too soon after a scene. Frank had huffed and kicked off his jeans again before climbing back in bed saying, “I’ll stay out of your way in the morning, but I’m not leaving you like this.”

Gerard’s still blindfolded, so it freaks him out for a moment when he wakes up but is still encapsulated by darkness. Frank chuckles softly and strokes his cheek. “Fuck, you’re so pretty like this.”

Gerard melts under his touch but before he lets himself start to play along he shakes his head. “No, I have to start getting ready.”

Frank sighs but undoes his blindfold. Gerard blinks in the soft light of his bedroom then sits up. He cradles his bonded wrists to his chest for a moment, briefly wondering if he could pass them off as bracelets at work. 

“Come here, dork.”

Gerard pouts a little, but holds out his wrists for Frank to uncuff him. He presses a kiss to each freed wrist. “Feeling better this morning?”

Gerard nods, still staring at his wrists. Frank wraps his hands around them and squeezes just enough for Gerard to sigh happily. 

Frank hums and leans in to kiss his forehead. “Hurry through work then you can come home and I’ll tie you up properly.”

Gerard grins. “And we can get pizza?”

“Only if we can get pineapple this time,” Frank bargains. 

Gerard pretends to think about it before saying, “Fine. Now let me go so I can brood in front of my closet.”

“You’re such a mess,” Frank grins, letting go of his wrists and getting out of bed. 

It’s always hard to go about business as usual when Frank is hovering in the living room, waiting for Gerard to get ready to leave. Frank works at a bookstore, so his hours don’t always match Gerard’s 9-5 existence. 

“I’m working eleven to seven,” Frank says, looking at his phone, “I can pick up the pizza on my way over if you call it in.”

Mornings like these make Gerard pretend that Frank is his boyfriend, because it seems like it would be so effortless. But then there’s a twist in his stomach that reminds him that Frank isn’t his. That they’re just doing this for each other to keep themselves sane and functional. They’re just a give and take, nothing more. They’re not assholes to each other, but there’s no deeper feelings there. It’s all just a scene. Always a scene. Something that gets played out and then ends. 

“He’s practically your boyfriend already,” Mikey has said. 

And Gerard would always remind him that “Frank doesn’t do commitment.”

Which Gerard respects. He’s taken enough liberal arts classes to know that relationships come in all forms and not all of them include commitment or monogamy. He keeps trying to remind himself that Frank still cares about him, enough to check in with his mental state and buy him those expensive muffins from the cafe across his work when Gerard’s had a particularly bad day at work. He still takes the time to look for all of Gerard’s cues, able to bring him that quietness in his mind without really having to ask what kind of day it is. 

Because sometimes Gerard needs to be on his knees obeying everything that comes out of Frank’s mouth, and other times Gerard needs to be the one in control. There’s days where the only thing that makes him feel like he’s got a handle on his life that’s moving too quickly is to have Frank holding still while Gerard wraps his favorite blue rope in pretty designs around Frank’s inked skin. 

And, Gerard likes to remind Mikey, it’s not always about Gerard. 

Because it wasn’t. Gerard likes that he was the balm to Frank’s inner turmoil as well. He likes that Frank watching red welts bloom on Gerard’s ass and thighs calmed him in the same way rolling around on stage did, sometimes better. He liked that on the days where Frank’s anxiety got to be too much, Gerard could give him instructions that he could focus on instead of whatever had him jittery. 

“Gee?” Frank asks, tilting his head. 

Gerard blushes and pours his coffee in his mug then pours one for Frank too. “Yeah, that works. I’ll call in your stupid pineapple pizza.”

Frank grins at him and takes the coffee that Gerard offers and holds the door open for him. 

Yeah, sometimes Gerard’s not that mad that his routine gets a little messed up. 

*

“Way!”

Gerard winces and stupidly looks out of his cubicle, glancing around to see if perhaps there is someone else with his last name that Brian is yelling for. 

“Gerard Way!”

Well fuck. 

Gerard sighs and gets out of his broken chair that he’s literally duct taped together because he’s too chicken shit to ask Brian for a new one. He walks quietly down the length of the office space and to Brian’s office in the far back corner. He’s got a nice window view and sometimes Gerard stares just past Brian’s ear to look out at the skyline instead of Brian’s scary face when he’s yelling at Gerard for whatever fuck up he’s done now. 

“Gerard, there you are,” Brian says, sitting back in his chair. He gestures to the door, “Shut that please.”

Gerard cringes internally, but shuts the door and hovers by it until Brian rolls his eyes and points to one of the chairs in front of his desk. 

Gerard sinks down in the ugly patterned chair and hunches over. 

“So you submitted a pitch for the spring’s new show lineup?” Brian asks even though Gerard knows that Brian already knows that he did. 

So he just nods. 

“Right, something about breakfast?”

He nods again. 

Brian narrows his eyes at Gerard, probably taking in last night’s smudged eyeliner, the greasiness of his hair, and how there’s a coffee stain on his shirt. “Well the creative team liked it and they’d like to schedule a meeting with you.”

What?

Gerard’s pretty sure he’s imagined that because it almost sounded like Cartoon Network wants to talk to Gerard about a cartoon idea he came up with when he was drunk on the phone with Mikey. Mikey had just had another fight with Pete about long distance relationships and how he may or may not be in love with his best friend, so Gerard made up this story about a monkey who was a chef and just really fucking loved breakfast. Which was always sort of an inside joke between him and Mikey. Mikey was really a slut for breakfast. His drunken spiel made Mikey laugh and when it came time for people to submit ideas for any new show ideas for the spring, Mikey told him to submit it as a joke. 

“What?” Gerard asks. 

Brian rolls his eyes. “They have an opening next Wednesday around lunch time, does that work for you?”

Gerard stutters, “Y-yeah.”

“Great!” Brian says with mocked enthusiasm, “I’ll forward you the details.”

Gerard isn’t sure if he was really dismissed, but he feels like he was so he gets up and scurries out of Brian’s office. 

He pulls out his phone, ready to call Mikey but something in him puts the phone down on his desk and stare at it. It’s not that he doesn’t want to share the good news with Mikey, it’s just--he’s not really sure there’s news yet. He has a meeting, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to have a show for sure. It doesn’t mean anything and he really doesn’t want to get Mikey excited for him just to disappoint him again. He really is tired of being a disappointment to him. 

*

By the time Frank gets to Gerard’s apartment, he’s buzzing. He had been pacing back and forth with his phone in his hand, wondering if he should call Mikey and talk things out with him, but he really…

And then he had sat at his drawing table and tried to sketch some storyboard ideas, but nothing looked good. Nothing seemed to be worth showing anyone, let alone Cartoon Network. He regrets ever sending in his stupid idea, regrets letting Brian set up the meeting. So he just drew, then shredded the page, then started again until there was a pile of paper scraps surrounding him on the floor.

About an hour until Frank came over, Gerard fumbled through ordering the pizza Frank wanted then threw his phone because he almost called Mikey and he just couldn’t talk to him like this. If he did, he’d let him know how much of a big deal this was and Mikey would worry. Mikey was going to have a stroke at the age of twenty-four over worrying about Gerard. 

Frank unlocks the door and takes one look at Gerard before setting down the pizza box and whispering, “Come here.”

Gerard hurries to him, falling to his knees and pressing his face against Frank’s stomach. Frank runs his fingers through Gerard’s hair and hums. 

They stay like that for a few moments, before Frank says, “I want you to go to the bedroom and undress down to what you’re comfortable with. Bring back the handcuffs and meet me at the couch, understand?”

Gerard nods, his forehead moving up and down Frank’s shirt. 

Frank wraps his hand around Gerard’s jaw and tilts his face up so that he’s looking at him in the eyes. “Words, baby.”

“Yes, sir,” Gerard breathes. 

Frank smiles softly. “Good,” he says, then his smile twists into a playful smirk, “I think I gave you an order, did I not?”

Gerard blushes, heat flooding his cheeks and chest as he stands up and hurries to the bedroom. He lets his thoughts empty out as he sheds his clothing, making sure he doesn’t look at the papery evidence of his previous breakdown as he makes his way to the nightstand where Frank left the handcuffs from last night. He grabs those then digs through the box in the closet to find the chain that goes with them before heading to the living room.

He keeps his eyes averted from what Frank’s doing and focuses on his task of waiting for him in the living room. He puts the cuffs down on the coffee table, then sinks down to his knees next to the couch. 

And then he waits. 

Sometimes this is half the scene, Frank making Gerard wait. It was a good mental exercise that was simple to put Gerard in. And it was something that Frank thought benefited Gerard, making him spend time in his head alone before Frank helped him through it. Sometimes it was too much and Gerard was too wound up before Frank had even gotten into the room to touch him. Usually Frank was good at telling what nights were too hard for Gerard to be in his head for too long. 

Tonight is borderline too much, so Frank doesn’t make him wait long before he steps into the living room with the pizza box balanced on one hand and a tall glass of water in his other hand. He sets both down on the coffee table and picks up the handcuffs. 

Gerard moves his hands to the small of his back and is rewarded with a soft, “Good,” from Frank before his wrists are secured. 

Frank comes around to sit on the couch and helps shift Gerard so that he’s facing him. Frank turns on the television and Gerard is thankful for that, something else to distract him from all of the uncertainty running rampant in his mind. 

Frank opens the box of pizza and pulls a slice out before holding it against Gerard’s lips. “Open, chew, swallow,” he orders softly, “That’s all I want you to think about.”

Gerard thinks that this is the part that people don’t really understand. He’s only really talked about it to Mikey, but he’s seen enough about BDSM in the media for everyone to think it’s something super sexualized. It can be, and sometimes it is with Frank and Gerard, but other times it’s quiet moments like this. It’s Gerard giving up all control and letting Frank take care of him for a while. It’s Frank giving simple instructions for Gerard to follow and focus on. A task to complete. A challenge to win. Something to narrow in on that has a reward at the end of the tunnel. And that’s not always sexual either, sometimes it’s just seeing the smile on Frank’s face, just knowing that he’s getting something out of this too. That he feels at peace sitting on the couch feeding Gerard pizza while some rerun of a game show plays behind him. 

When Gerard gets one slice down, Frank holds up the glass of water to his lips and helps him drink from it before asking, “Color?”

“Green.”

Frank kisses his forehead and feeds him another slice. Gerard wrinkles his nose at the glob of pineapple and Frank chuckles, “Picky, picky”, and scrapes them off before resuming. 

Gerard finishes that one and then turns his head when Frank leans to grab another. “Done?”

“Yes, sir.”

Frank coaxes his head down so that he’s resting his cheek against Frank’s denim clad thigh. Frank runs his fingers through his hair with one hand, and munches on pizza using his other hand. They stay like that until an episode finishes and Frank closes the pizza box. 

When he reaches behind Gerard to free him from the cuffs, Gerard whines and Frank gives him a light slap against his cheek, which only makes Gerard lean into Frank’s hand. 

Frank chuckles, “Oh, it’s like that?”

Gerard looks up at him through his lashes. “Please,” he says, purposely leaving off the ‘sir’. 

Frank narrows his eyes. “Don’t bait me, if there’s something you want, ask.”

“Hit me,” Gerard says quickly. 

Frank leans back against the couch and raises his eyebrow. “I said ask, not demand. You’re not in charge tonight.”

Gerard bows his head and stares at the floor, squeezing his eyes shut because the comfy headspace he was just in is slipping and Frank hadn’t put him far enough under to keep him safe from the thoughts spiraling back in. 

Fuck, he really wants to drink. If this had happened a year ago, if he had been offered this opportunity at his job a year ago, he’d be passed out on the couch by now. 

“Look at me,” Frank says in  _ that _ tone. 

Gerard’s head snaps up. And then he hears the slap before he registers that his head has turned a different way and his cheek is stinging, his ears ringing. And it’s fucking perfect. 

“Again,” Gerard breathes. 

Frank grips Gerard’s hair and pulls back so that Gerard is looking up at him again. “Order me again and I’ll tie you down to the bed and not touch you until it’s time for you to go to work tomorrow.”

Gerard swallows thickly and nods. 

Frank pulls tighter on Gerard’s hair. “Words,” he bites out. 

“Yes, sir.”

Frank looks at him, his eyes softening and he leans forward to press a kiss to Gerard’s stinging cheek. He coaxes Gerard so that he’s bent over the couch, laying his head down so that he’s rubbing his sore cheek against the fabric of the couch. 

Gerard zeros in on the way rubbing his cheek against the fabric makes his skin burn. So much so that he doesn’t hear Frank move, and then there’s another slap and the curve of his ass is stinging. It’s dull, Frank’s just warming up and Gerard settles in and whispers, “One.”

Frank only asks him to count so that Gerard has something to hang on to until the spanking pulls him under. Sometimes Frank only takes it that far, when Gerard’s voice thickens and slurs into nonsense. Other times when Gerard is really wound up tight, Frank will keep going until Gerard is a sobbing mess, snot and drool coating his face.

Gerard is stubborn when it comes to pain play. He knows that Frank’s tried to push him to the point that he’ll safeword out, just to see that he  _ will _ use the safeword, but Gerard hasn’t used it since they’ve started this. And now it’s gotten to the point where Frank finds a place he’s comfortable going since he doesn’t trust Gerard to stop. 

By the time Gerard whimpers out “ten” his bones feel like they’ve melted into the couch and his whole body ceases to exist except where Frank’s hand lands on him. Like he only is alive where Frank touches him, and it’s wonderful and scary all at once. And maybe this is what Mikey is talking about. Because Gerard has never been able to have one foot in and one out, he’s always an all in kind of guy. 

The slaps have more bite to them now, like Frank is trying to prove a point or something, and it has Gerard gasping at the blows before uttering “twelve”, “thirteen”, “fourteen”, and then he stops counting because his voice sounds so far away anyway. All that’s left is hot pain licking up his thighs and ass. In this moment he’s not Gerard, a failing artist who got a big break that he’ll probably fail, he’s just a reaction to Frank’s action. 

“Color?” 

Gerard sobs at the loss of contact, confused with his body for craving more and shying away from Frank’s touch at the same time. 

Frank strokes the side of his face, his hands so gentle in contrast to the delicious pain they’ve inflicted. “Gee, baby, tell me.”

“Green, green,” Gerard hiccups, tears getting stuck in his throat, “Green, Frank, please.”

Frank sets a gentle hand on his back, then uses his other hand to push on his shoulder so he can sit him up on his knees. 

“No, no,” Gerard sobs, “I said green, Frankie,  _ green _ .”

“Shh,” Frank murmurs, using his long sleeves to wipe at the tears on Gerard’s cheeks. 

They used to be terrified of tears, back when they couldn’t tell the difference between good tears and bad tears. Gerard always cries when they do impact play, it’s cathartic and Frank finds it beautiful that Gerard lets himself go like that. 

“So good,” Frank praises softly, cleaning up his face the best he can before laying him back down. He pets the back of Gerard’s hair and then Gerard feels the air shift, and Frank’s hitting him again. 

He groans and presses his face into the couch and just breathes. Smack, inhale. Smack, exhale. Before he met Frank, he never thought he would be into this. Especially when it didn’t lead to sex. He’s been spanked during sex before, who hasn’t? But it’s never been him bent over a couch and taking a beating. And sometimes that really shakes him up, that he likes this. Because he thinks that must mean there’s something really fucked up with him right?

“You’re not fucked up,” Mikey had told him, then sighed, “Well, maybe a little. But not because of that. You’re just trying to find something that helps.”

Gerard hadn’t replied, so Mikey pressed, “It does help, doesn’t it?”

Fuck, did it help. It wasn’t even about the pain really. Well, sorta, he liked the intensity, loved that it drowned out anything he had been circling around in his mind. But it was more that he was in this very vulnerable position where he had to trust Frank. Trust him to be able to give him what he needed, trust him to be able to stop when Gerard was too suggestible. Gerard knows that they’re not a traditional couple, they’re not even--it doesn’t matter, it really doesn’t matter because they have this. 

His skin feels like it’s just fire at this point and Frank stops hitting him to rake his nails down his tender flesh, causing Gerard to cry out. 

And then Frank says firmly, “We’re done.”

Gerard sags against the couch, spent this time and nods. And he floats for a while, so far gone that he doesn’t even hear Frank moving to the bathroom to wet a washcloth. He sits still as Frank wipes down his face again, cleaning off the tears and snot before placing the cold cloth on his heated skin. 

Gerard’s not sure how long he stays like that when he hears Frank whisper, “Gee, stand up for me.”

Gerard’s not sure he can even move his legs, much less that they’re strong enough to hold him up. But, he grips onto the arm that Frank holds out for him and brings himself up to his feet. 

Frank smiles softly and kisses his bare shoulder. “Good boy. Walk with me to the bedroom.”

Gerard’s chest constricts at the praise and he wants to turn in Frank’s arms and rub up against him like a cat, but he was given an order and he’s still under enough to be obedient. Frank gets Gerard onto the bed and lays him on his stomach before he goes through their nightstand. Gerard sighs happily when Frank rubs the cooling lotion over his thighs and ass, pressing soft kisses on his spine. 

“Coming back to me?” Frank murmurs. 

Gerard hums, not ready to leave this soft cocoon in his mind just yet.

Frank chuckles and sets the lotion back on the nightstand before stretching out on the bed next to him, stroking his hair and whispering against his ear as he comes back to his body. Tells him how beautiful he is, that he’s such a good boy who only deserves good things. Kisses his temple and tells him that he’s so proud of Gerard. 

When they first started out, they didn’t have much to go on besides what they’d seen in porn and the few parties that Frank had gone to. One of the things that Gerard learned right away was that he didn’t like humiliation and he didn’t like being talked down to when they were in a scene. He was already in such a fragile state that he didn’t need Frank to call him a ‘pain slut’ or ‘dirty whore’ when he was smacking him around. They had learned that the hard way when Gerard’s cries were the scary kind. The kind that tore through his whole body and made him wail. 

“Gee?” Frank had asked, “Gerard, what color?”

And Gerard had hesitated because they had been so new into this that he didn’t want to safeword out and then Frank be afraid to touch him again. But Frank had read the hesitation, thank God, and stopped. He pulled him in his arms, cradled his sobbing body to his chest and rocked him. “Shh, you’re safe,” he murmured. 

It took a long time to get him to settle down, only after Frank had told him how amazing he was, how beautiful and strong and brave he was. And when Gerard’s tears dried at the soft words, they learned that Gerard needed to be talked gently to, needed to be praised and told he was doing something right for once.

“Two sleepovers in one night,” Gerard murmurs after awhile, grinning when Frank jumps at his voice, “I’m a lucky gal.”

Gerard waits for him to say something sweet, something like “only for you”, but Frank sinks down into the pillows and says, “I never leave after a scene.”

And that weird twist in his stomach from earlier in the day is back. The one that tells him the scene is over and Frank still isn’t his. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How about a fluffy rec after that angst?
> 
> [Teacherverse](https://archiveofourown.org/series/7671) is a really cute teacher AU series where Gerard is an art teacher and Frank is the english teacher. I don't know about you, but I love reading Christmas fics all year round, it's the perfect dose of fluffiness that I need when the summer heat is way too suffocating. 
> 
> As always, you can find me on [tumblr](https://throwupsparkles.tumblr.com/).


	3. Chapter 3

The thing that sorta sucks about his thing with Frank is that whenever Gerard starts thinking about a relationship with him, Frank gets distant as if he can read his mind or something. They usually go without talking for a few days after a scene, but things had started to feel a little different. Frank had been spending more time with Gerard, he had spent the night twice at his apartment. And Frank had been texting him more, even if it was just random thoughts throughout the day. 

Which is why it sorta shakes him when it’s been three days since Frank left his apartment and he hasn’t heard from him. 

“Well did _you_ text him?” Mikey asks, clearly in the middle of eating because his words come out all garbled. 

“No,” Gerard says quietly, taking another drag of his cigarette, “I didn’t want to seem clingy.”

Mikey sighs and Gerard wishes he was there with him instead of standing outside his work, huddled in a jacket. “Maybe, and this is just me spitballing here,” Mikey says in that tone that always makes Gerard want to roll his eyes and hug Mikey at the same time, “Maybe he feels a little weird about hitting you and then you not texting or calling.”

“Mikey, it’s a--”

“Yeah I know. You guys have this all worked out, except you really don’t,” Mikey says, “Because you call me every time, Gerard, every fucking time and tell me that he hasn’t called and you get all fucking worked up until the next time you guys end up doing some more fucked up shit.”

“It’s not--”

“You know I don’t mean it that way,” Mikey says, exasperated, “But you’re hurting yourself if you don’t protect your feelings, ok? You want him to fucking hit you? I don’t care as long as you’re being _safe_ and I don’t just mean having a safeword, I mean making sure that this isn’t fucking with your head. Which, it clearly is.”

Gerard leans back against the building and flicks his cigarette butt onto the pavement. “I don’t know what you want me to do.”

“I want you to call him and set up a time for you two to actually talk,” Mikey says, “Not fuck, not do a scene. Talk and negotiate, something you should have done in the beginning.”

“Negotiate?” Gerard wrinkles his nose, “Mikey, this isn’t fucking court--”

“Then you need to stop seeing him,” Mikey says, “If you can’t have a goddamn conversation with him about what you two are doing, then you don’t need to do it anymore. I’m done talking in circles with you.”

Gerard hangs up on Mikey and slides down the building until he’s sitting on the pavement. Mikey has no idea what he’s talking about. Like, sure, there’s things that they should have talked out in the beginning and Gerard knows that he’s a little fucked when it comes to this. He’s willing to do whatever Frank wants, lets him call the shots because he just doesn’t want to lose this. 

He knows that’s fucked. He _knows_ , but it doesn’t change anything. 

Mikey doesn’t try to call him the rest of the afternoon when Gerard is pretending to work in his cubicle. He knows that Brian is going to say something about the sketches he was supposed to have finished this afternoon, but he really can’t find it in him to care. He can’t help but think back to what Mikey had said about Gerard taking this job to get ahead in art, and how it’s sort of done the opposite. He’s not sure when he got to this point. When did he get so bogged down that he stopped drawing? 

It used to be the only thing that helped him get through the day. When he was a kid, he used to always carry around a sketchbook and some pencils so that he could get lost in his own world when the real one got too hard. He used to draw in school all the time, too insecure about the kids making fun of him to want to try to live in the present. And it wasn’t fair to put that pressure on Mikey, so he mostly kept to himself and his drawings.

When he got to college, he thought he had finally found his safe haven. But art school is less about the art and more about trying to be original when there’s no original thoughts between the professors and student body. Everyone looked like carbon copies of each other and the professors shaped everyone to be the same. It didn’t fucking make sense, and Gerard again didn’t fit that mold. 

He thinks that’s maybe why he started drinking. Art was no longer strong enough to pull him into that safe place. Drinking made him feel warm and fuzzy, blurred his mind enough that he didn’t care that he was still in the real world because it was like he had this nice, cozy film coating his brain where all the hurt couldn’t get in. 

Until, of course, it did. Until Gerard started drinking so much that he couldn’t make it to classes, when he had to start retaking classes in the summer so that he could still graduate on time. And then there was the whole alcohol making him more depressed thing. Which had been really fucking scary. Mikey didn’t know what to do with him at that point. Until then, Mikey had just thought Gerard was going through a phase that a lot of kids in college went through. So his brother was drinking, big deal right? Lots of people in college binge drink, it’s sort of expected. And yeah, Mikey’s eyes got less humorous the more times he had to show up to a bar and drag Gerard home. He got sadder the more he had to sit up in the bathroom with Gerard so that he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit. And he finally had enough when Gerard got so fucked up one night that he hadn’t stopped throwing up for fifteen minutes. It had been so bad that Gerard was pretty sure he wasn’t going to make it that night. The pain, both physical and emotional, had been so great that he didn’t _want_ to make it through the night. 

“You’re getting help,” Mikey had whispered to him, wiping his sweaty brow with his sleeve, “You’re going to stop drinking and we’ll get you some help.”

He did stop drinking. Mostly because he never wanted to see that look on Mikey’s face again, but he never went to a meeting or a therapy session like Mikey wanted him to. 

“I’m fine, Mikes,” Gerard had bit out when Mikey kept coming over to his apartment to check in on him, “I don’t need a meeting and I don’t need to talk to a stranger about my issues. They’re just going to give me meds and you know how well that worked last time.”

Mikey looked so broken. Like he was just a walking skeleton, and it made Gerard sick because he wondered how long Mikey had looked like that but Gerard was just too fucked up to notice. 

But Gerard had gotten better. He’s better now. 

He just fucking hates his job, but who doesn’t? And he’s in love with a guy who doesn’t love him back. Gerard isn’t special. He knows that. 

It doesn’t make it suck any less though. 

Mikey doesn’t try to call him on the train ride back home either and when he gets home and he still hasn’t gotten any calls, he caves and dials his number. 

“Are you done being a bitch?” Mikey answers. 

“I’m sorry,” Gerard breathes, “I just…”

Mikey doesn’t interrupt this time, and he knows it’s because he’s still peeved at him. He’s not going to help him through this conversation. Gerard has to stop leaning on Mikey so much, he knows that. But Mikey is always there and he gets mad when Gerard doesn’t call him about things. He thinks he’s really fucked this kid, took away his carefree youth by making him have to look out for his big brother. 

“I just don’t know what I’m doing anymore, Mikey,” Gerard says quietly, “I don’t like anything that I’m doing, you know? It’s not...not like _that_ , but it’s close. Close enough to really make me feel sick.”

Mikey’s still quiet, but Gerard knows it’s the kind of quiet where Mikey is trying to think of the right thing to say. And Gerard wants to tell him that he always says the right thing. “What would you do differently?”

Gerard throws his keys on the coffee table and stretches out across the couch, wincing a bit when he remembers the last time he was on the couch. He still can’t sit normally. “I don’t know, not this.”

“You do know,” Mikey says, “Or you wouldn’t be so disappointed.”

Gerard hums. That makes sense. “I don’t have specifics.”

“That’s fine. Tell me anyway.”

He grins because this feels like when they were kids and would whisper their dreams in the darkness of their bedroom. Back when Mikey was always just on the other side of the room, not the other side of the world. “I want to draw again.”

Mikey makes a noise of agreement. 

“And I want to be able to do it my way, you know?” Gerard says, “I want to make comics, or something creative. Even if it’s--”

“No,” Mikey says, “Don’t do that. Don’t settle.”

“I want to make comics,” Gerard amends, “And maybe start my own imprint.”

“That would be cool,” Mikey agrees. Gerard can hear him step outside, listens to the wind blow into his speaker and then a flicker of a lighter. Gerard reaches to grab the lighter off the coffee table and lights his own cigarette. “What kind of imprint?”

“Something like Vertigo probably,” Gerard muses, “Darker than the normal superhero stuff, weirder.”

Mikey snorts, “Yeah, like _Sandman_.”

Gerard hums and takes another drag. 

“What else?” Mikey asks. 

“What--”

“What else do you want?” Mikey asks, “Frank?”

Gerard sighs, rolling over so he was facing into the cushions. “Yeah,” he says quietly, “or like, I want to feel like I’m...I don’t know. It’s not that he makes me feel bad, no, Mikey listen, he’s not bad.”

“I didn’t say he was bad. I’m his friend too, you know.”

Gerard smiles because Mikey is sort of friends with everyone, so that doesn’t really mean much. “He makes me feel good when we’re together. Not just...you know, when we do things, but just sitting on the couch with him is nice.”

“You should tell him that.”

“I really don’t want to scare him away.”

“He’s pretty brave, Gee,” Mikey says softly, “And you’re not that scary.”

*

On Thursdays, Frank works nights at the bookstore and usually doesn’t close up until around ten at night. Sometimes Gerard comes by and waits for him outside, sitting on the curb smoking and playing Snake on his phone. 

“Hey.”

Gerard’s snake runs into itself and he sighs at another loss before turning to look at Frank. “Hey.”

Frank doesn’t really follow the store’s dress code. He’s got on the company’s polo, but he also has a striped long sleeve shirt underneath it with his skeleton gloves on. He’s got a chain necklace around his neck with a padlock, and that sort of does something to Gerard’s dick. 

Frank lights a cigarette and eyes Gerard for a minute. “Walk me home?”

“Sure,” Gerard says, as if he hadn’t been planning that the whole time. 

They’re quiet for most of the way before the silence gets to Frank and he starts telling Gerard stories about asshole customers he’s had to deal with today. And Gerard just nods along, not really listening because he’s thinking about his conversation with Mikey. 

It’s fucking cold, that’s the only reason why Frank puts his arm around Gerard’s shoulders as they turn down his street. At least that’s what he’s trying to remind himself. It’s not because he likes him likes him, and fuck, what is he? Thirteen? Mikey would have a field day with that. 

“You seem out of it,” Frank says, opening his front door and stepping to the side to let Gerard in. 

Frank’s apartment is a lot cleaner than Gerard’s. It’s still cluttered with books, magazines, and CDs, but he doesn’t leave pizza boxes to accumulate on the coffee table like Gerard does. Gerard loves coming over to his place. Frank keeps a bunch of blankets on his couch and the carpet is always so soft underneath his bare feet. He keeps the shades always drawn closed, covered with different tapestries so that it just feels like he’s nestled in comfort when he’s here. 

The first time he came over, he had stayed the weekend. Frank kept him in bed for the majority of the two days, grinning whenever Gerard said he was going to go home but didn’t get up to put his clothes on. Gerard remembers how the sunlight filtered through the purple tapestry that was hanging on Frank’s bedroom window, washing them in ethereal lighting and Gerard’s pretty sure he fell in love with Frank that weekend. Loved the way the purple lighting made his pale skin glow, how his tattoos seemed to come to life under his hands. 

“Work,” Gerard answers, because it’s the truth and also it’s the universal answer when someone asks what’s wrong.

Frank goes to the fridge and pulls out a couple of cans of soda. Gerard sees a few bottles of beer in there and he looks down at his feet. It’s not like he’s triggered that easily or anything. When Frank knows that Gerard is coming over, he clears out all the alcohol in the apartment and Gerard doesn’t know if he appreciates the gesture or hates it. He doesn’t want people to change their drinking habits because of him, but it’s still nice when he can talk to someone without staring at the beer bottle in their hands. 

“Thanks,” Gerard says, taking the soda and moving to the couch. 

Frank hovers in the kitchen, so Gerard turns and raises an eyebrow. 

“You usually call when you’re coming by,” Frank says. 

“Oh,” Gerard starts, turning back around and staring at his soda, wondering if he should even open it. Maybe he should just leave now before he embarrasses himself more. 

Frank sinks down on the couch next to him and sets his can of soda on the coffee table. “What’s up?”

Gerard picks at the tab of the soda can and shrugs. 

“Bullshit,” Frank says softly, almost fond and that’s really not fucking fair. He doesn’t need Frank to sound like he knows him. 

“I was...Mikey thinks that we, um,” Gerard stumbles. 

Frank frowns. “You tell Mikey what we do?

Gerard winces, because, yeah, maybe it’s kinda weird that he talks to Mikey about this stuff? But he doesn’t know who else he’s supposed to talk to. “Um, not specifics”--Frank snorts-- “just, just that we hang out?” Gerard says, turning redder by the minute. 

Frank chuckles. “And what does Mikey think?”

Gerard looks up at him and regrets it immediately. Frank’s face is too open, and it always is. He’s such a fucking contradiction. How can someone who wears his emotions so easily on his face be so hard to figure out? Frank’s watching him with cautious eyes, almost afraid, but Gerard doesn’t know what he’s scared of. 

“Gee?” Frank presses. 

_That I’m falling in love with you_ , he thinks, but he can’t say that. So he says, “That we need to talk.”

“We’re talking.”  
  
Gerard frowns and looks down at his soda again. This is a lot harder than he thought it would be. And it’s not like he can just say “nevermind” and walk out the door because either Frank will chase after him and really make him talk or he’ll let Gerard leave. And neither of those are outcomes that Gerard wants right now. He just wants to crawl under one of the blankets on Frank’s couch and go to sleep. He feels so fucking drained. 

No one told him that being an adult would be so exhausting. That getting up and sitting on a train every morning would be so soul crushing. How watching everyone’s apathetic, pre-caffeinated face stare lifelessly out the window would make him feel so dead inside. And sitting in a six by eight cubicle for eight hours a day would be so fucking tiring. Then, because all that isn’t enough, then he has to fucking navigate being a recovering alcoholic who’s never learned how to hold a normal relationship with someone because he had been either too antisocial to talk to anyone or too drunk to remember anyone’s name. 

“I just really like sitting on the couch with you,” Gerard says softly, and he hates himself as soon as the words leave his mouth. 

But when he looks up at Frank, his eyes have softened and he’s smiling a little. He shifts and lifts up a blanket and motions for Gerard to come closer. 

“Want to watch _Jurassic Park_?”


	4. Chapter 4

Frank’s favorite rope is the blue one that’s a little worn and the thread is really fucking soft. Gerard likes the way it looks around his tattoos, loves the way the blue contradicts the red splashes of color over Frank’s arms. Fuck, sometimes looking at Frankie like this makes Gerard want to make art. 

This is art.

He’s got Frank kneeling next to the bed on top of a pillow while he creates two loops held together by a knot. He widens them so they’re about Frank’s shoulder’s width apart and slips them onto Frank’s arms that are being held behind his back. Gerard creates another knot along Frank’s spine, pulling until two more loops are formed. He slips those on Frank’s arms too and continues until there’s knots pressed against Frank’s spine and his arms are stripped in blue. 

“Color?” Gerard asks softly, pulling the ends tight around Frank’s wrist. 

“Green,” Frank murmurs, sounding dazed already. 

Gerard smiles and ties off the ends of the rope at Frank’s wrist. Gerard takes a step back and admires the way Frank looks, head bowed and shoulders moving slowly with Frank’s deep breaths. He sort of wants to blind fold him, but Frank looks like he’s going under pretty fast. Instead, Gerard takes a seat against the wall on the opposite side of Frank, far enough away that he won’t distract Frank but close enough to get to him in case he gets into a headspace he doesn’t like. 

The first time Frank asked for Gerard to tie him up, they ended up at the Urgent Care because Frank dislocated his shoulder. Or, rather, Gerard dislocated Frank’s shoulder from trying to follow a YouTube video and tie Frank at the same time. 

“Wait,” Gerard had said, “Was that a slip knot?”

“I don’t think they’re all slip knots, or I’d be able to get out,” Frank replied. 

“Yeah, but safety?”

“Just knot them up, Gee,” Frank huffed and Gerard was too embarrassed by his inexperience to really argue. 

“If you say, ‘I told you so’, I’m going to punch you in the face,” Frank had whined while they waited for the doctor to see him, “And not in the fun kinky way.”

Gerard likes to think they’ve gotten better. Regardless what Mikey thinks, they’re pretty good on the whole safety bit. Gerard’s rope tying abilities have gotten better and Frank’s more patient with him while he’s trying. Gerard had gotten into a fucked up mindset at the beginning, afraid he was too timid to be a dom or whatever, and even the label still weirds him out. 

“Don’t think about it like that,” Frank had told him once, when Gerard had been too in his head to pick up the flogger and really go at Frank. 

He had sat Gerard down on the bed and took the flogger from Gerard, draping the stands over Gerard’s hand. “You know what it feels like,” Frank said, “You know it doesn’t hurt in any way that I wouldn’t want.”

Gerard knew that, the logical part of his mind  _ knew _ , but the louder part that always doubted himself wasn’t sure he’d do it right. Frank tapped on his temple. “Get out of there,” he murmured, “That’s what this is about, right?” 

And then Frank had stood up and undressed before laying face down on the bed--which, fuck, that had not been fair at all. It took Gerard a few times to warm up to it, but Frank was patient and kept murmuring encouragement until his voice became a low groan and then Gerard knew he was doing it right. 

Gerard looks at his phone and checks the time, being sure that he doesn’t keep Frank tied up too long. That was another mistake that they had made early on, Frank’s arms had fallen asleep and Gerard had spent a long time afterwards rubbing the feeling back into his arms. He waits a bit longer before getting up and placing his hand on Frank’s shoulder. 

He whines softly and Gerard kisses his forehead. “I know,” he whispers softly, starting to unwrap the rope. He goes slow, uncovering a section then rubbing at the muscle there before continuing. By the time he lays the rope on the floor, Frank is practically melting in his arms. 

“Hey, you,” he murmurs, “let’s get you up onto the bed.”

Frank shakes his head and tucks his face into the curve of Gerard’s neck. He chuckles a bit and rubs at his shoulders. “Alright, we can stay here for a couple of minutes.”

One of the things that Frank’s told Gerard he likes about their situation is that Gerard lets him sub without making him feel too subby. “If that makes sense,” Frank had said, then shrugged. Gerard got it. Frank was...a bit too bratty to be a sub, or at least with a dom that didn’t have enough patience--which was always the concern when meeting up to play with someone you didn’t know. Frank had sorta been put off from playing for a while after a dom got too rough with him when Frank was just being Frank. He’d safeworded out, but it still fucked with him sometimes. 

And honestly, it sort of worked that Frank didn’t get too deep into the whole sub thing, because Gerard wasn’t really a strict dom. He just wanted Frank to get what he needed, and if laying in Gerard’s arms on the floor was what felt good to him right now, Gerard wasn’t going to press the issue just because he didn’t follow directions. 

Gerard presses kisses along Frank’s hairline, talking softly to bring him back out of his headspace gently. He talked about this documentary about whales he watched while he was on the phone with Mikey and how he pressed the phone up against the speaker so Mikey could hear them sing to each other. Gerard had gotten all misty eyed and pretended he couldn’t hear Mikey’s sniffles on the other end of the phone. 

“You Ways,” Frank chuckles softly. 

Gerard hums and keeps rubbing at Frank’s arms. “How are you feeling?”

“Perfect,” Frank whispered dreamily and Gerard beams, proud of himself for being able to make Frank feel like this. 

Frank lifts his head from Gerard and cups his cheek before kissing him. Gerard sighs happily and threads his fingers in Frank’s hair, pulling him closer. Frank presses Gerard back until he’s laying out on the floor and then crawls over him. 

It’s not odd for Frank to get affectionate after a scene. Sometimes it messes with Gerard’s head though, because he’s not sure if Frank actually wants to kiss him or he’s just in that state of mind where he’s chasing something that feels good. And Gerard’s not brave enough to stop him and ask. 

“I mean it’s not like we haven’t fucked,” Gerard said to Mikey, “I mean, obviously, but it’s sorta became something not sexual? And it’s really good, but I don’t know, Mikes, it’s not like I can tell him I don’t want to fuck anymore until I know his intentions.”

“Jesus H. Christ,” Mikey had muttered, “I feel like I have to go to couples counseling just to work through the bullshit you tell me.”

“Mikey,” Gerard had whined. 

“You can tell him no, Gerard, for fucks sake, that’s what consent is,” Mikey said, sounding like he was getting worked up. 

“Oh! Mikey, no, I didn’t mean it like that,” Gerard hurried, “I  _ want _ to have sex with him, but my head is all fucked.”

“Because you’re in love with him.”

“Would you stop saying that?”

And Gerard had tried to bring it up. Sorta. In the round-a-bout way that Gerard’s cowardly mind likes to think. “Have you ever dated someone you played with?” Gerard had asked one night when they were scooping up peanut noodles from takeout containers. 

Frank raised his eyebrow and then shrugged. “No, not really. I don’t really date.”

Gerard’s cheeks flushed, because he already knew that, “Right.”

Frank gave him a strange look, like he was trying to worm his way into Gerard’s mind. “I think dating and playing together is just asking for trouble, so I try not to.”

And that had just made things worse. Gerard nodded and stuffed his mouth with noodles before he said anything else stupid. 

“But that doesn’t mean I don’t care about them,” Frank continued softly, staring at Gerard, “If that’s what you’re concerned about.”

Gerard shrugged and swallowed. “I was just asking.”

Frank smirked. “Right.”

Frank’s pulling Gerard’s shirt up and over his head when Gerard realizes that he’s working Frank’s jean’s open. This is not the plan, he thinks, for once he wants to sit down and talk about their feelings instead of just fucking through them. 

*

Gerard didn’t tell anyone about his meeting today. 

Because if he fucks up, then it’ll just be himself he’s letting down and he’s used to his own fuck ups. He really doesn’t want to hear Mikey sigh and then tell him everything will work itself out and he doesn’t want to see the careful expression Frank will give him, something neutral because he’ll probably be confused as to why he’s supposed to care. 

So, he’s standing outside the meeting room, pacing the hallway. He’s ridiculously early and thinks maybe he should go outside and have another cigarette, but he wonders if coming in smelling like smoke will be off putting. His hands start shaking and he decides that smelling like smoke is probably better than having an anxiety attack, so he rushes outside. 

He’s got a cigarette in his mouth and his phone to his ear before he realizes what he’s doing. 

“Hey,” Frank says, sounding surprised. Gerard hopes it’s a pleasant surprise and not a “what the fuck?” kind of surprise. 

“I have this meeting,” Gerard wheezes, and then he’s coughing because he’s fucking choking on air and he’s just accepting his fate of dying here outside on the sidewalk with Frank listening and not understanding why he ever got involved with this loser. 

“Woah, Gee, hey,” Frank says softly, and then when Gerard keeps coughing, he says, “ _ Gerard _ ,” in that tone that always overwrites Gerard’s mind. 

Gerard takes a deep breath and winces at how broken it sounds. 

“Cover your eyes with your other hand,” Frank instructs and Gerard does it, sighing happily at how safe this feels. And Gerard knows he’s really in a fucked up mindset if being blindfolded is calming him down, but it does. He can tune out the hot sun, the looming building behind him, and the odd stares he’s getting from people with briefcases. He can just focus on Frank’s voice telling him to breathe it, hold it, then exhale. “What time is your meeting?” He asks softly. 

“One,” Gerard answers. 

“Ok,” Frank says, “Take another breath in.”

Gerard does. 

“Hold it,” Frank says, then after four beats, “Exhale.”

And Gerard feels a lot looser after he expels all the air out of his lungs. “Thank you,” he whispers. 

“Knock them dead, baby,” Frank murmurs, then hangs up. 

Gerard stares at his phone, then pockets it before letting it bother him.

He’s pretty sure he blackout during his presentation. He vaguely remembers holding up his storyboards onto the easel and pointing, waving his hands around a lot, then packing up and rushing back to his cubicle. He plops down in his broken chair and think’s it’s pretty silly how fucking relieved he is to be sitting in his grey prison. 

On the train back home, he’s fantasizing stretching out on his couch with a pint of ice cream and watching the extended editions of the Lord of the Rings, with all the extra commentary--something he usually doesn’t watch unless he’s with Mikey. And maybe he’s sorta going to pretend Mikey’s sitting next to him and trying to steal bites of his ice cream, but that’s sort of depressing to admit, even to himself. 

What he doesn’t expect is to see Frank reading a  _ Punk Rock Confidential  _ on his couch with a lit cigarette in his mouth. He looks up over his shoulder and smiles. “Hey, how’d it go?”

Gerard hesitates by the door before shrugging. “Don’t remember much of it honestly.”

Frank purses his lips then sets his magazine down. “So I was thinking that maybe we should go to this party tonight.”

Gerard starts to say that he can’t go to parties anymore when Frank says, “Not that kind of party.”

Oh. 

“I thought you didn’t go to those anymore,” Gerard says, setting his work bag on the kitchen table and going to the freezer to get out that pint of ice cream he had been fantasizing about. 

Frank gets up from the couch and follows him into the kitchen. He takes a spoon out of the drawer and takes a bite of the ice cream, before handing Gerard the spoon. “Soy? For me? You’re too sweet to me,” he grins. 

Gerard blushes and it deepens when he realizes what Frank is wearing. Instead of his usual jeans and hoodie combo, he’s got a pair of dark pants and a black button down that looks so soft, Gerard wants to rub his cheek up against it. He’s got his eyes rimmed in dark make up and his hair is that perfected kind of disheveled that Gerard knows wasn’t by accident. 

“It’s different,” Frank says, “Going without looking for someone. There’s less pressure I guess.”

Gerard nods because that makes sense. He takes the spoon back and takes a bite with a lot of caramel. He lets the sugar melt on his tongue before asking, “Would we play there?”

Frank takes the spoon and shrugs. “If you wanted to.”

“Isn’t that the point?”

“We could just watch if you wanted,” Frank says conversationally and Gerard wonders if he’s really this nonchalant about it, or if he’s just  _ really _ good at masking his emotions. 

“I think,” Gerard says, considering, “That I’d want to watch for a bit before deciding.”   


Frank smiles softly and scoops some ice cream onto the spoon before holding it to Gerard’s lips. “I think that’s a good idea,” He says quietly, slipping the ice cream into Gerard’s mouth when he opens. He likes little exchanges like this, something quiet and keeping him busy so he’s not over thinking everything. And, fuck, he wished Frank wasn’t so good to him so it would be easier to not fall so fucking head over heels in love with him. 

“Am I subbing or you?” Gerard asks. 

Frank rubs his thumb at the corner of Gerard’s mouth, wiping away smeared caramel then licking his thumb. “You had a rough day, you tell me what you need.”

Gerard knows he’s giving Gerard the option even though Gerard’s sort of already slipped into a sub mindset, opening his mouth when Frank holds out ice cream to his lips without thinking about it. If Gerard told Frank he wanted to be dom, Frank wouldn’t hesitate. 

“I’ll sub,” Gerard whispers. 

Frank smiles softly and nods, putting the lid on the ice cream and setting it back in the freezer. He sets the spoon in the sink then turns back to Gerard. “You should probably get ready then,” he says softly, “They don’t allow street clothes to these things.”

Gerard arches an eyebrow, Frank’s attire starting to make more sense. “Just put on something black,” Frank grins, looking at Gerard’s attire, “Honestly what you have on is fine, just change shirts. You have coffee stains, just here,” he says, pointing to the middle of his chest. 

Gerard sighs and pulls the shirt off, frowning at the stain, because he probably should get it soaking now if he has any hopes of getting it out. But, he’s a little distracted by Frank in his kitchen to really focus on proper laundry skills. Instead he tosses the shirt on the counter and goes into his bedroom to pull out a different dark shirt, something thin enough so Gerard won’t feel like he’s suffocating tonight. 

He hesitates by the mirror in his room before he picks up the eyeliner pencil he keeps there and lines his eyes too. And then, what the fuck, he sits down on the floor and pulls out his makeup bag from under the dresser and coats his eyelids in red, smearing it out so he looks like a horror movie extra. 

Frank shows up in the mirror behind him and his eyes are hard before his lips quirk up. “Nice.”

Gerard meets his eyes in the reflection. “Yeah?”

Frank nods. “Ready?”

“Just about.”

Frank kisses the top of his head. “Take your time,” he says softly, then walks back out to wait for him in the living room. 

And see, it’s shit like that. The sweet little kisses, the soft words of encouragement when they’re not in a scene that makes him wonder if there’s more here than a mutually beneficial arrangement. 

When Gerard meets Frank out in the living room, he’s already got their jackets ready and he drapes Gerard’s over his shoulders before coaxing him out of the apartment and locking the door behind him. 

“I know you said you wanted to watch before you decided if we played,” Frank says quietly when they’re sitting in the back of a bus, “But do you want to follow directions while we’re there?”

They’ve gotten pretty in the groove of things to not have to negotiate before they get into a scene, not that they really ever did much negotiating. It was more of a “let’s try this thing out and if it sucks, tell me” kind of arrangement. But this was different. Because although Gerard’s curiosity had him agreeing to this party in the first place, this was Gerard being in public, which he normally doesn’t like to be, and Frank knows that. Having something to focus on would help him get through the night.

“Yes,” he agrees. 

Frank nods and strokes the back of his head. “Ok, do you want to go under?”

Again, normally there’d be no question here. They did this so that Gerard could go under and not feel the weight of the shit he constantly dealt with. But he’s never been under in public, and while he had no issues with being wasted in public, Gerard looks at things a bit differently now that he’s sober. Because being under is a really vulnerable place to be and he’s already skittish in public and--

“Hey,” Frank murmurs softly, “You don’t have to. I can keep you from--”

“I trust you,” Gerard whispers, “I trust you when I’m like that.”

Frank stares at him, holding his gaze then tracing over his face as if he’s reading the full story there. Then he kisses his forehead. “I’ll take care of you.”

“You always do.”

*

The first thing that Gerard notes is that DMs are not called Dungeon Masters, they’re monitors making sure that everyone is safe--which sorta loosens the coil of anxiety in his chest. Not that he thinks Frank would let anything happen to him, it’s just a nice reassurance. 

The second thing is that it’s  _ really _ easy to be in a social situation when he’s following Frank’s rules. 

“Once we get inside, don’t talk unless I tell you can,” Frank had instructed as they walked near the house. “Stay by my side, don’t wander off,” he said with a small smile, because he knows how Gerard can get when he gets curious. 

It was pretty easy. Don’t talk and stay by Frank, sounds like his perfect kind of party. Except it wasn’t like any party he’d ever been too. Everyone was dressed in dark clothing, aside from some bright pink or red PVC attire, which Gerard followed with his eyes. He could see Frank’s small smile as he watched Gerard out of the corner of his eye. 

“Frank!”

Gerard turns and sees a man who was heavily tattooed and pierced make his way over to them. Gerard tenses a bit, before he realizes he wouldn’t have to make small talk or even introduce himself. It’s easy to melt into Frank’s side as he talks to the man--Jess or Jeff, something like that. 

“...didn’t think you were into this anymore.”

Frank strokes the back of Gerard’s head and he’s done that before, and it always makes him want to purr and curl in closer, but Frank doing it to him in front of someone feels deliciously possessive. “Found someone that made me reconsider,” he says softly and Gerard opens his eyes, not even remembering closing them. 

Frank smiles almost shyly at him, then rests his hand on the back of his neck. “Think we’re going to look around, I’ll catch up with you later.”

Gerard goes pliable under Frank’s hold, letting him lead him from room to room. There’s a room where someone is tied face down onto a bench while the dom spills hot wax onto their back. Gerard shivers at the whimpers filling the room and he presses closer to Frank. 

“Would you want that?” Frank asks quietly, rubbing his thumb into soothing circles against Gerard’s neck. 

Question, that means Gerard has to talk. “I don’t know.”

Frank lets Gerard watch a little longer, sees the way the dom pours warm water over their back and gently presses the wax off their back and Gerard sighs dreamily at the welts across their skin, thinking about how that would look on his back. 

“Maybe,” Gerard amends softly and he sees Frank’s lips curl up. 

They watch another couple in the corner of a room with a Saint Andrew’s cross, the couple he saw earlier dressed in the neon PVC, only one of the girls is stripped naked and cuffed to the cross. She’s begging, straining at the cuffs as her dom just stands there and watches. Gerard knows how maddening that could be. He thinks of those times where Frank leaves Gerard kneeling and waiting for him, how it’d feel like hours and Gerard would feel like he was on the brink of losing his mind. 

And then he’s in another part of the house, which seems to have endless rooms, where a guy is wrapped in rope and suspended from the ceiling. Gerard wanders closer, walking from one side to the other and admiring the pattern the rope makes across his skin, how the bright yellow rope brings out all the dark ink of his tattoos and Gerard thinks he needs to add yellow rope to his next shopping list. 

Frank walks over to him and wraps his hand around his throat. “Thought I told you not to wander off,” Frank says against his ear. 

A shiver works it’s way down Gerard’s spine and he drops to his knees next to Frank, head bowed to the floor. He’s aware of eyes on him and it makes Gerard’s skin squirm. He’s not sure if he’s doing this right and it seems like there’s a room full of people judging him. 

Frank squats down next to him and puts a hand on his lower back. “Not that I don’t appreciate the show, but I told you to follow directions,” he says, “I didn’t ask you to kneel, did I?”

Gerard’s mind starts running in circles and his eyes feel hot. He keeps them trained to the floor, not wanting to look up and see the disappointing looks of everyone else in the room. Frank’s still waiting for an answer, but Gerard’s throat feels thick and he’s not sure if it’s from fear of messing up again or from the heavy pressure of everyone’s eyes on them. 

“Gee,” Frank says calmly, stroking his back, “What color?”

Gerard wants to lie and tell him green. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s been uncomfortable, but kept going out of fear that it would freak Frank out too much. But the heaviness in the room makes Gerard want to shout out red and run home. He wants to burrow under his covers that he hasn’t washed since Mikey was home and made him do laundry. He wants to curl up where it’s safe and not think about meetings or expectations, he doesn’t want to feel this small ever again.

“Yellow,” Gerard breathes, squeezing his eyes shut, embarrassment making him feel like he’s being burned alive. 

“Ok,” Frank murmurs softly, “Let’s get up and go outside for a cigarette.”

Gerard’s not sure if they’ve broken the scene. He’s never safewordered before but he’s pretty sure “yellow” doesn’t mean stop everything, but enough that when he stands up and reaches for Frank’s hand, Frank just squeezes back and leads him though the house and outside. Frank pulls his cigarettes out, lighting one before tucking it in Gerard’s lips then lighting his own. 

“What happened in there?” He asks softly. 

Gerard takes a couple drags of his cigarette and shrugs, looking down at his shoes. 

Frank lifts Gerard’s chin up with his thumb. “You’ve never said anything but green,” he says in the same soothing tone he’s been using since Gerard started freaking out. 

“It was just a lot,” Gerard admits quietly. 

“Because there were people watching?” Frank guesses. 

Gerard nods and watches Frank watch him, watches his soft gaze and how it drapes over Gerard like one of those soft blankets Frank keeps on his couch. 

Frank cups his cheek and Gerard leans into the touch. Frank smiles and drops his cigarette to bring his other hand up to cup Gerard’s other cheek and then he’s bringing him in to press his lips softly to Gerard’s. Gerard melts under his careful touches, at the pillowy soft kisses Frank presses against his lips, the gentle slip of his tongue against Gerard’s. “You’re so good,” Frank whispers, stroking his cheeks and Gerard hums happily, letting Frank’s words fill his head with fluffy cotton candy, pushing out the fear and shame from earlier.

“We’re going to go back inside,” Frank murmurs, “But I’ll keep my hand on you, so you don’t feel lost.”

Gerard nods, kissing him again. 

Frank grins, giving in for a moment, before pulling away. “Alright, let’s go,” he says, putting his hand on the small of Gerard’s back and nudging him to the door. 

Gerard takes a final drag of his cigarette before stepping back inside. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If at all possible, the boys are stupider in this chapter and will be even worse in the next chapter (just fyi).

Realistically, Gerard knows that Mikey could have taken a cab home from the airport. He fucking hate airports. There’s way too many people, all hurried and scurrying from one place to the next. They’re always rude or have kids that talk way too loud, some are shouting on their telephone while others are arguing with staff at baggage claim. There’s too much going on and even after Gerard puts on his sunglasses and plugs his earphone in, it’s still making him jittery. 

He thinks about calling Frank and having him go through that breathing thing he did for him the other day at his meeting, but he’s trying to keep his distance. Not like anything bad happened--sorta the opposite.

When Frank had led Gerard back into the party, he kept his hand on the small of Gerard’s back the rest of the night so he felt tethered to Frank. He felt himself start to slip under as the night progressed and Frank talked to other people they came into contact with, eyeing Gerard and answering for him since Gerard was still following his instruction not to talk unless Frank allowed it. 

There was something so comforting in letting Frank handle everything for the evening whether it was making small talk and letting whoever asked know what they did for a living-- and Gerard would blush when Frank would tell them that Gerard was an artist, the pride in his voice strong--to getting a bottle of water for Gerard and making him drink from it, stroking his throat softly as Gerard swallowed. He took Gerard around to the rest of the displays, letting Gerard linger at the scenes that interested him. There was one where someone was getting cut with a scalpel, and the horror movie fan in him perked up at that. 

“Should have known you’d be into that,” Frank chuckled, running a hand down his spine and Gerard shivered. 

He watched, fascinated, as the dom cut small and controlled lines into her sub’s skin. Gerard held his breath as the blood bloomed along the cut then rolled into a slow drop down the curve of his abdomen. 

Frank let him watch until they finished the scene, and Gerard was so deep under as he watched the small cuts get cleaned and bandaged up. He marveled at how gentle the dom was throughout the whole scene, from inflicting the cuts to caring for her sub afterwards. And Gerard leaned against Frank, enamored at how beautiful that kind of give and take was. 

“Let’s get you home,” Frank had murmured, and he got them a cab to take home since he didn’t want Gerard to be under on public transit. 

He had pulled Gerard into his apartment and to the bathroom. 

“Undress and kneel,” Frank had instructed, pointing to the space next to the shower. 

Gerard did and waited for Frank to get the shower to the right temperature, which was always an issue since Gerard’s shower was possessed by a demon or something. Finally Frank undressed and ran his hand through Gerard’s hair, tugging lightly, “Stand up.”

Gerard rose up and let Frank lead him into the shower, sighing softly at the hot water running over his head and shoulders. Frank kissed him then murmured, “Back on your knees.”

Gerard went back down easily, feeling fluid and unhindered by any thoughts of second guessing. When he was like this he didn’t care that his knees popped from being out in the cold all day, or that his stomach curved over when he was in this position. He didn’t wonder what Frank was going to ask of him next or if this would be the last time they would do this. All he was focused on was now, it was all he  _ could _ focus on. 

Frank poured shampoo in his hands then worked it in Gerard’s hair, making a pleased sound when Gerard sighed and his shoulders dropped any final tension that was still stuck from his day. Frank smiled and tilted Gerard’s head back to rinse the soap out, then he coated his stands with conditioner, “This must be Mikey’s, no way you own conditioner.”

Gerard felt his lips curl up and leaned his head against Frank’s stomach. Frank rubbed at the back of his neck and let Gerard stay like that until the water started to get cold, rinsing his hair out quickly then helping him out of the shower. 

And then Frank had dressed him in his warmest pajamas. He wrapped him in his blanket then curled next to him and whispered how great Gerard had done tonight, how proud he was that he used his safeword when he needed to. And it didn’t hold that much weight at that moment when Gerard was drifting off to sleep, warm and safe, but it hits Gerard like a fucking train now. 

Because he had never done that before. Frank had never really put him in any situation where he felt like it  _ had _ to stop, but there were definitely times he would have benefited from saying “yellow” just like he had that night. Just to have Frank slow the scene down and make some modifications. He had just been so terrified that if he ruffled any feathers, if he wasn’t easy for Frank, then he’d stop this. Whatever this was. 

He knows it’s wrong. He’s not stupid, he’s just fucked up. 

Gerard jumps when he feels a hand on his shoulder, then he looks up and smiles at Mikey. He pulls out his earphones. “Hey,” he says.

Mikey’s mouth quirks into an almost smile and Gerard tries not to notice how Mikey is scanning him for any signs of distress. “Hey, Gee.”

“Ready to be home?”

“Fuck yeah,” Mikey sighs, “You’d think I’d get used to that plane right, but it’s still Hell every time.”

Gerard grins and helps Mikey with his bags before leading him to his car. He’s glad that Mikey fills the drive with small stories about his time in London, even though Gerard’s heard most of these stories on the phone already. But, Mikey is like Gerard and knows that stories sound better in person. 

Gerard comes inside with Mikey when they get to his apartment. He helps him sort his mail and they order pizza, and Gerard knows that Mikey is waiting for him to bring up Frank. Because Gerard told Mikey about the party, but that was a few days ago. And Gerard still hasn’t heard back about his show. He’s pretty sure Mikey can see how wound Gerard is. 

“Why do you always do this?” Mikey asks softly after they’ve slowed down on the pizza. 

“Do what?” Gerard mumbles, getting up to go to Mikey’s fridge. 

If he had done this just a year ago, Mikey’s fridge would be stocked with beers. It would have been so easy to just grab one and get happily buzzed on Mikey’s couch. And Mikey would have joined him. They’d easily be drunk before the night was over, clenching their stomachs from laughter and too much carbonation. Well, it would have been like that in the beginning, before Gerard took it too far. Because Gerard never really knows when to stop with things that are too good. Or too bad. He’s pretty shit at telling the difference sometimes. 

Instead, he grabs a soda and comes back to the couch where Mikey is waiting for a proper answer. “It’s just the way we work,” Gerard says. 

Mikey narrows his eyes. “It doesn’t work.”

Gerard doesn’t say anything, just picks at the tab of his soda. 

“I think you should start seeing someone again,” Mikey says softly and Gerard’s heart sinks. 

“Please stop trying to make me go to therapy,” Gerard sighs. 

“You need it,” Mikey insists, “You’re just...you’re sorta flailing around hoping something will stick and make you feel better.”

“Wow, thanks,” Gerard grumbles, setting his soda down on the table and getting up. 

Mikey grabs onto his wrist. “Gee, stop. I’m serious. I’m not trying to be mean, it’s just--you know I love you, right?”

Gerard frowns. 

“I wouldn’t ask you to do something if I thought it was bad for you,” Mikey says, then he pulls out the brother card, “Please go, for me.”

“Fuck you,” Gerard sighs, sinking back onto the couch. 

Mikey doesn’t even look the least bit guilty, fucker. 

“You have to come with me to Frank’s show Friday then,” Gerard says and Mikey shakes his head, but he’s smiling. 

“I don’t fucking understand you two.”

*

By Friday Frank still hasn’t texted Gerard, but he knows that Frank will still be looking for Gerard at his show. He knows it doesn’t make sense, and he just keeps telling Mikey that they’re not dating. Frank doesn’t have to text him everyday--even after a very emotional night, but whatever. 

“I don’t understand how you can drink that much sugar and not throw up,” Mikey says when he hands Gerard his weird non-alcoholic cocktail. 

“Alcoholics like sugar,” Gerard tells him.

“Uh-huh,” Mikey says slowly, then wrinkles his nose as Gerard sips at his soda that has a bunch of juice and syrups in it. 

Mikey doesn’t drink when he’s out with Gerard. They had fought about it in the beginning because Gerard didn’t want everyone walking around eggshells for him, but Mikey had insisted and then finally broke and yelled, “Let me do this for you!”

Gerard had blinked, then crossed his arms and waited for Mikey to explain. 

“I couldn’t see the signs,” Mikey sighed, “I didn’t know--I didn’t--”

Gerard’s arms fell to his sides and it felt like he had been drained of all his energy, like he had just realized he hadn’t slept in years. “Mikey…”

So Mikey doesn’t drink around him and it sorta feels good now. Especially tonight. He doesn’t know why--fuck, that’s a lie. He’s still on edge from work. He kept checking his email every five minutes to see if anyone from the meeting had emailed him with their decision and he lurked around Brian’s office until Brian snapped at him and made him run copies for him. If Gerard hates anything more than tracing over other people’s work, it’s standing at the copier machine in the middle of the office space for hours while he copied and sorted Brian’s papers. Fuck that guy. 

He’s almost to the point where he wants to jump into the pit tonight just so he can get knocked around for a bit. But then he sees Frank take the stage and he thinks that he’s got a better way to get knocked around. 

“God, please don’t do that next to me,” Mikey groans. 

Gerard blinks and looks at him. “What?”

“You’re like...eyefucking him,” Mikey says, taking a drink of his soda like it’s got alcohol in it. 

Gerard grins. “Payback from all the times I had to watch you grind up on Gabe.”

“Like you've never ground up on Gabe,” Mikey mutters, rolling his eyes, and then whatever Gerard was going to say gets drowned by Frank’s wailing. Gerard’s not the biggest fan of Frank’s music, but he likes the attitude of it. He likes the way the songs sound like a feeling, like if he closes his eyes and can imagine punching Brian to this song. And he likes the way Frank gets into it, how it looks like he’s in a whole other world. 

Mikey’s taken Gerard to a lot of shows for his work. He’s seen a lot of musicians to know that Frank is different--and that’s not him being biased or whatever. Mikey thinks so too. There’s not a lot of people in the scene that play as hard as Frank. That are able to pull a crowd to him and move them to where he wants them to go. Frank’s told him plenty of times that he doesn’t really want to be a front man, and that he still gets a little spooked up there on stage. He’s let it slip sometimes that it’s why having Gerard come out to his shows means so much. 

Which is why he comes out to these bars and sips on his sugary drink even though he’s still craving alcohol. Even though all he can think about is how easier this all would be with a buzz, with a nice blanket of alcoholic indifference coating his eyes so he doesn’t get jealous when he sees Frank hanging over some girl after the set. 

“What an asshole,” Mikey mutters, tugging Gerard’s hand so that they can go outside with the other smokers. 

“It’s not a big deal,” Gerard shrugs, “We’re not together.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” Mikey sighs, lighting a cigarette. 

Gerard lights one too and bites at his lip. Frank’s left with other people before when he’s come out to shows. It’s not a big deal. Except it is, but it  _ shouldn’t _ be because they’re not exclusive--they’re not anything and that’s totally fine. 

“You don’t do casual,” Mikey says, the smoke leaking out his lips stronger against the cold air, “You never have.”

Gerard shrugs. “It’s what works.”

“Can I ask you something that might piss you off?”

Gerard sighs and rubs his face. “Go ahead.”

“What is it about him?” Mikey asks, “Like, what makes him worth all this?”

“You’re his friend--”

“I’m friends with lots of people. Assholes even,” Mikey says, “But you know what I’m not? Sleeping with assholes who break my heart, because even  _ I _ have more self respect than that.”

“Fuck,” Gerard grumbles, “Way to lay it on thick.”

“Well you’re not fucking listening to me!”

“Would you stop?” Gerard demands, looking around to make sure people aren’t staring at them, “God, let’s just go.”

Mikey sets his drink down on a table like he’s been ready to go since they’ve walked in, and they’re about to leave the patio when Frank comes and puts his arms over their shoulders.

“Hey guys!” Frank shouts, “Mikey! You’re back from London, when’d you get in?”

“Couple days ago. Gerard didn’t tell you?” Mikey drawls, fixing him with a look. 

Gerard shoots one back at him like  _ cool it _ . 

Frank just laughs it off and drops his arm from Mikey’s shoulder, tugging Gerard closer. “Hey,” he says a little breathy, and Gerard wants to close his eyes at the sound, to bottle it up and store it for a rainy day. 

“Hey,” Gerard says. 

One of Frank’s bandmates comes out and hands Frank a beer. He lets go of Gerard and takes it with a smile, taking a drink then turning his back to Gerard and talking to the guy--Gerard thinks he plays the bass? Mikey looks livid and keeps staring at the beer in Frank’s hand. 

“This guy keeps asking about you,” the guy says, smirking a bit and nodding back towards inside. 

Frank giggles and turns to Gerard and Mikey. “Hey, I’ll catch up later? Thanks for coming out.”

He looks up at Gerard and there’s a moment of hesitation where Gerard almost wonders if Frank is baiting him. If he’s wanting Gerard to say something, wanting him to tell him not to go talk to another guy when Gerard’s right here. Frank holds his gaze and licks at his bottom lip, then when Gerard doesn’t say anything, Frank says, “ok”, softly, then turns and walks inside. 

“What the fuck?” Mikey demands. 

“Let’s go home,” Gerard mutters. 

*

Gerard walks into Mikey’s apartment and asks, “Pete used to be in the scene, right?” 

Mikey looks up from his bowl of ramen and frowns. “Um, hello to you too and what?”

Gerard sits on Mikey’s couch and lights a cigarette. “BDSM,” Gerard clarifies, “Didn’t you tell me that he used to be into that?”

Mikey frowns at him. “Why?”

“Well the parties are invite only,” Gerard says. 

Mikey sets down his bowl of ramen. “And when did you go looking for parties?”

“It’s not that kind of party,” Gerard sighs and Mikey rolls his eyes. 

“I  _ know _ , I’ve been to some.”

“Wait, what?”

“Are you really that surprised? Look at who I've dated.”

Gerard nods. 

“Also, fuck you by the way. You’re the only one allowed to be kinky?” Mikey huffs, picking up his ramen again. 

Gerard rolls his eyes. “No, of course not. I just thought you would have mentioned it by now.”

“You’re the one who always wants to talk about your sex--”

“It’s not about the sex!”

Mikey grins. “I know, I just like fucking with you.”

“You’re an asshole,” Gerard grumbles, leaning back against Mikey’s couch. He normally would never ask for Pete’s help. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Pete, not at all. He’s probably one of his favorite of Mikey’s boyfriends. The problem with asking for Pete’s help is that he likes to help  _ too _ much. 

But Gerard is pretty desperate right now. Usually either Frank or Gerard would have caved in their little game of text chicken, but they haven’t and Gerard feels like he’s going to crawl out of his skin. He doesn’t understand why this is different from all the other times. Doesn’t get why the night of the party spooked Frank enough that he didn’t want to reach out to him. Doesn’t understand the look Frank gave him before he decided to go home with someone else the night of the show. He doesn’t get Frank at all, and he never really did--but they had something that worked and it was like Frank was fucking up all their arbitrary rules. 

He keeps going back to the party, combing the events with a fine toothed comb to see if he did something to freak Frank out. The only thing he can think of is safewording out of their scene, but Frank had told him he was proud of him for doing that. Unless he had only been saying that to make Gerard happy while he was under. And Gerard tries to focus on what had happened when they got back to the apartment. He had been so tired, coming down from subspace, so tired that he only gets flashes of memories back. 

“Pete says he can get you to a party,” Mikey says, interrupting Gerard’s spiraling. 

Gerard blinks and sees Mikey looking at his phone. “There’s one tomorrow,” he tells him, “Pete says he’ll pick you up at seven.”

Gerard laughs nervously. “Great.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um, I'm going to issue a warning for this chapter. 
> 
> There's a scene that doesn't necessarily go wrong in that the dom does anything wrong, but Gerard doesn't speak up when things don't feel right and it puts him in a pretty bad mindset. Please skip this chapter if you think it'll make you uncomfortable.

“You see, there’s already a show about food,” Brian says, leaning back in his chair and clicking his pen. 

Gerard nods slowly. “Right, no, I understand.”

Brian peers at him, and for a moment it sort of unsettles Gerard in the way it always does when someone looks at him like they care. Brian leans forward and rests his elbows on his desk. “You doing alright? I know the first few years out of school are a bit jarring.”

Gerard shrugs, because this is weird. Brian is his boss, he’s the guy that he always tries to avoid--but he’s sorta not being a dick. “I’m fine.”

Brian stares at him for a moment, then sighs and leans back. “Yeah, alright. Well, don’t hesitate to reach out to HR if you need anything,” he says and pauses like Gerard is supposed to read in between the lines. When Brian sees that that’s clearly not going to happen, he adds, “We have a counseling service. You know, for whatever you need. They’re good at helping students adjust to work life too.”

Gerard twists his hands and stares at the door, ready to bolt. 

“And you know you, um, can talk about whatever you might need if you’re having a hard time with things outside of work too,” Brain finishes, like this conversation is making him uncomfortable too. 

“Thanks,” Gerard manages. 

“Yeah,” Brain says, “Um, anyway, good talk.”

Gerard gets out of his chair so quickly, he almost knocks it over, then rushes out the door. He passes his cubicle to go outside for a smoke, barely making it the designated fifty feet from the door before he lights up. 

This is stupid, he thinks. Gerard’s fine, he doesn’t need any additional help. And like, fuck Brian for saying that shit. Gerard’s aware that he’s a little...eccentric maybe, but he had hoped he didn’t come across as a psychopath at work. Maybe he should speak up more, and probably stop bolting from his cubicle the minute it turns five o’clock. He’ll start eating in the break room at lunch too, that’ll show Brian that he’s cool. 

Except Mikey also said that he needed to talk to someone, and Mikey’s usually right about things when it comes to Gerard. It’s not that he’s against therapy and all that, he just doesn’t see what they can do to help Gerard now. It’s not like there’s an obvious problem with him. It made sense that Mikey wanted him to go when he was getting sober, that was a clear problem that needed to be fixed. But he got over that on his own. And now, what? They need to help him not feel so shitty? He thought that was just being an adult. No one is fucking happy, how could they be? And sure, he’s got stress, but who doesn’t? And he’s got this weird relationship with Frank, but he’s not going to bring that to therapy. That’s not a therapy thing, right? Therapy is for people who are about to off themselves or hear voices, Gerard’s not that bad. 

But he promised Mikey that he would, so maybe he should call HR like Brian mentioned. Or, Gerard thinks selfishly, maybe he can ask Mikey to do it for him since he hates talking on the phone--especially if it’s to make an appointment. He’s not even sure he knows where his insurance card is. 

At least it’s over with, Gerard assures himself. He doesn’t have to keep worrying about the show, he didn’t get it and that’s...upsetting, but not the end of the world. He kinda knew it wouldn’t work out, but he also couldn’t help the small part of him that had hoped it would. The part of him that imagined how happy Mikey would be for him and maybe it’d even impress Frank. And it would sort of be a middle finger towards everyone that ever doubted him for going to art school. But, it didn’t happen. He was still an art school graduate who spent his days tracing other people’s work for pay that didn’t even help cover his student debt. 

Gerard lights another cigarette, because he’s not done feeling sorry for himself. 

And he’s really trying not to think about Frank. Especially Frank going home with someone else, which shouldn’t even be a big deal, but Gerard can’t help the sour ickiness that boils in his stomach. Gerard keeps thinking about the look that Frank gave him before he went back into the bar. Like, what? Was he supposed to say something? That’s really un-fucking-fair of him to do because it’s not like they’ve ever talked about stuff like that. And where does Frank get off on making  _ Gerard _ be the one to make these sort of decisions. He’s just sorta along for the ride, and Gerard feels nauseous at the idea that maybe that’s what Frank is doing. Maybe they’re both just being fucking idiots and hoping the other person will say something. 

_ Or _ , and this is probably more likely, Frank just isn’t as invested in this as Gerard is. Mikey’s always said that Gerard gets way too attached to people. “Remember Jennifer?” Mikey had said, and yeah, Jennifer was definitely an experience. They weren’t even really dating, because apparently Gerard has this thing where he never asks anyone out, but he gets so wrapped up in the idea of it. So much so that Jennifer just thought he was a creepy stalker and then she moved to Washington State to go to this hippie college where they don’t even have majors. 

Gerard flicks the butt of his cigarette to the ground and looks at his watch. Only five more hours until he goes out with Pete tonight. He’s excited, but also nervous about it. 

He could tell that Mikey hadn’t really approved, but he didn’t say anything about it either. He was probably just happy that Gerard wasn’t going to be sulking around his apartment all weekend about Frank. And he was going with Pete, Pete would keep him safe. 

“You’ve been to one of these,” Gerard said, “It’s not like they’re scary.”

Mikey held his gaze and said, “No, but you don’t know when to say no.”

“It’s not about that,” Gerard said, “I’ll be more direct with someone I don’t know. I won’t have to worry about their feelings.”

“Frank would  _ want _ you to say--you know what? No, I’m not getting into this with you anymore,” Mikey said, then sighed, “Maybe this will be good for you. Getting out there and meeting more people in the scene on your own terms. You could learn more.”

Gerard didn’t say that his intentions weren’t that honorable. He mostly just wanted to prove to himself--and Frank--that he could also go home with other people. Which Gerard knows is childish, but it feels good. He wants to know that he’s not just waiting around for Frank to realize Gerard is worth something more. 

*

“What the fuck are you wearing?” Gerard groans when Pete walks in his apartment with a mesh top on and a dog collar. 

“Oh whatever,” Pete says, wrinkling his nose at Gerard’s basic all black attire, “Did you even try?”

“Can we go already?” Gerard asks, then he sighs, “Riding the bus with you is going to be fun.”

It wasn’t that big of a deal since it  _ was _ a Friday night and there were some people on the public transit who were wearing some interesting choices. Pete made friends with a girl in a feathered boa and they swapped lip gloss before Gerard dragged him off the bus. 

“So,” Gerard starts, “I don’t…”

“You can just walk around,” Pete says, “You’ll be able to tell who’s a dom. And”--he grins widely, staring at Gerard-- “I don’t think you’ll have to wait long for someone to come up to you. You’re so subby.”

Gerard frowns at that, not really understanding how he could be “subby” if he and Frank switched from time to time. And then he thought more about how Frank didn’t really like the scene because of the labels. Gerard’s never really thought about it since he’s only ever done this with Frank. He likes being the sub when they play, likes being on his knees and calling Frank “sir”. Gerard’s read some stuff online, just to make sure he’s not making an ass of himself, but he doesn’t really buy into everything he’s read. He doesn’t feel like what they’re doing is all that big of a deal. They have their safeword system, and Gerard thinks that’s really all that they need. They’re just exploring, and the things they’ve found have  _ helped _ . Gerard doesn’t understand why it has to be any more than that. Why Mikey is always worried about him, was hesitant about him coming to this party. He doesn’t get all the fucking rules either, doesn’t see why it’s such a big deal or complicated. Especially with the way Pete is explaining to him how to go over a quick list of soft and hard limits with anyone he wants to play with and how to negotiate. 

He wasn’t going to fucking court, what did he really need to negotiate?

“Do you want me to stick with you until you find someone?” Pete asks, putting his hand on Gerard’s shoulder. 

Gerard gives him a soft smile, because Pete really is a good friend. “I’m good, I guess we can meet back here?”

Pete flashes him a wicked grin. “Yeah, have fun. And be safe, ok?”

Gerard rolls his eyes. “Sure, Pete.”

Something in Pete’s sparkling eyes dim and his fingers twitch on Gerard’s shoulder like he’s thinking about keeping him there, but then he sighs and lets go before walking off on his own. 

There’s a lot of scenes similar to the ones he saw the last time he was at a party with Frank, but it all feels different this time because he’s not just here to watch. He could participate if he wanted. It makes watching so much more mesmerizing, makes his skin feel electrified and he knows that he’s probably flushed. His hands feel a little shaky, and he’s starting to feel more exposed the further he wonders into the house. It’s like everyone can tell he doesn’t know what he’s doing here, that he doesn’t belong.

But, like Pete said, it doesn’t take long for someone to come up to him. Gerard feels a little cornered at first, feels the air being stolen from his lungs. But then something settles in his bones because the man in front of him looks  _ nothing _ like Frank. He’s taller than Gerard, has muscles that have been maintained in a gym and he’s looking at Gerard like Gerard’s already made up his mind. There’s no questioning, no lingering, no second guessing, and Gerard likes this already. 

The guy looks over at the scene that Gerard was watching. It’s nothing super intense, there’s a guy restraint by cuffs that are dangling by chains from the ceiling while his dom is marking his back with red welts from his whip. 

“That something you’re interested in trying?” The guy says. 

Gerard hesitates and then realizes he was waiting for Frank to answer him. But Frank’s not here so he says, “Could be.”

The guy tilts his head to the side and he smirks. “That usually how you talk to a dom?”

Gerard thinks he hears warning bells go off in his mind, but he ignores them and says, “No, sir.”

It almost feels like he’s playing a character, and for some reason his mind drifts to playing Dungeons and Dragons. He sorta wants to laugh when he remembers thinking that the Dungeon Monitors were Dungeon Masters. 

“Very good,” the dom purrs and he reaches out--hand hesitating in the air for Gerard to move back if he wanted--before brushing the back of his fingers against Gerard’s neck. “Come with me.”

Gerard almost wishes he had worn a collar like Pete, thinking about how good it would have felt for this guy to pull him through the party by the neck. He wonders if Frank would be into that kind of thing--but then he squeezes his hand so his nails bite into his palm, trying to push Frank out of his mind. Yeah, he needs to go with this guy. And he needs him to make it hurt. 

They come to a stop at a St. Andrew’s cross, similar to the one that Gerard saw last time. Gerard takes a step to the cross, but the dom stops him with a hand to his shoulder.

“Safeword?”

“Um,” Gerard says, “I do the whole color thing?”

The dom smiles reassuringly. “Ok. Green, yellow, red?”

Gerard nods. 

He rubs the back of Gerard’s neck softly and it’s nice. It’s not the same as Frank, but it’s soothing enough that Gerard doesn’t feel like he needs to be running for the hills. The warning bells have quieted a little, though Gerard’s sorta not sure if they just seem quiet because he’s going deaf to them. 

“Limits?”

“I don’t…” Gerard starts, “I don’t have any really. Just, I want it to hurt.”

The dom furrows his brow and he stills his hand. “You’re new to this, aren’t you?”

Gerard blushes and looks down at the floor. “Is it that obvious?”

“A little,” he says softly, then he rubs Gerard’s neck again.

“I’ve done this with someone else, it’s not--I’m not new, just, we didn’t, don’t, we don’t have--”

“Ok, ok,” the dom says softly, “They’re not meeting your needs?”

Gerard feels sick at that question. It almost feels like a trap, so he doesn’t answer. 

“Right,” the dom says, “Ok, undress.”

Gerard freezes. He had sort of forgotten about that part, the whole being naked in front of strangers. But he wants this. He needs the pain so that he can push Frank out of his head and if he doesn’t do what this guy says, he won’t get what he wants. So, Gerard starts to undress, keeping his head down so he can’t see the dom’s eyes on him. 

“Good,” he says softly, “Now step up.”

Gerard feels his throat tighten as his wrists get bound to the cross and then his breath quickens when soft fabric slips over his eyes. Maybe this was one of those limits that Pete had been talking about. But he’s done this before with Frank and he’s worked through it, sometimes he even likes it. So is that not a limit? Is it Gerard just being dramatic?

He shivers at the hand that runs down his back. “God, you're so pale. You’re going to turn so red for me.”

Gerard almost wants to ask him not to talk, because it’s a little jarring to be in this position and not hear Frank murmuring reassurance to him. If Frank was with him right now, he’d probably tell Gerard how beautiful he looked, he’d ask him where he was at in his head and Gerard would probably say he was at a nine right now. He needed this so bad and Frank would bring him down slowly, he’d work him out of his mind and keep him calm at the same time. He wonders if that’s something that only Frank knows how to do. 

“Please,” Gerard whispers, because this is supposed to help him not think about Frank. This is supposed to prove to himself that he can get this somewhere else. That if Frank doesn’t want him, it won’t be the end of the world because he can get someone else to calm his mind. 

“Please?” The dom scolds. 

“Sir. Please, sir,” Gerard corrects himself, pulling at his restraints a little because he’s getting antsy. He doesn’t like to wait. And he doesn’t like that he can’t see, that he’s stuck here in a strange place where strange people are probably watching him. And he can’t see them. He can’t see, but he feels them. And he’s thinking too much. He’s thinking that this isn’t right, that he’s not supposed to be here without Frank. And that he shouldn’t even be doing this without Frank. It’s not going to be the same, it’s going to be

And then he’s crying out at the sharp pain slashing through his back. He doesn’t get the chance to get used to it, the pain just keeps lashing out. It’s good, some part of it--he doesn’t get time to think. He’s just drowning in waves and waves of pain, barely able to draw in a breath. It’s not like the fire that Frank usually ignites on him, it’s this  _ tearing _ kind of pain. Like it’s pulling Gerard a part and he’s not exactly sure if this is the kind of pain he likes. It’s not even...Gerard’s not sure what he’s using, if maybe it’s the instrument he doesn’t like, but it feels like Gerard is going to be nothing after this man is done with him. 

Gerard hugs the cross. Good. Maybe he doesn’t want anything left of him. Maybe this is what he deserves. He imagines all the ugliness getting whipped out of him. Failing artist.  _ Crack _ . Clingy brother. _ Crack _ . Flaky friend.  _ Crack _ . Obsessive lover.  _ Crack _ . Alcoholic.  _ Crack.  _ Gerard feels himself crumble at that last one. Feels the sob tear through his throat with a vengeance. Like the pain ripping through his backside isn’t enough. 

Frank would have stopped here. He knows Frank and whenever Gerard starts crying, Frank stops to check in to make sure they’re good tears. Gerard doesn’t think these are good tears, he doesn’t feel cleansed at all, he feels dirty. He feels like scum, feels like he’s getting punished for being such a shitty person and this isn’t how it usually feels. But maybe he and Frank had been doing it wrong, maybe this is how it’s supposed to be. Maybe this is what he’s deserved and Frank’s been too easy on him, like he doesn’t think Gerard is strong enough to take it. 

Gerard pictures a stoplight, sees the red light shining bright in his mind but he can’t bring himself to say it.  _ I deserve this _ , he thinks instead or even louder,  _ this is what you wanted _ . And it was, at least, he  _ thought _ this was what he wanted. But, fuck, this isn’t right, it’s not at all. And he’s not sure if that hurts more than the relentless pain that keeps tearing through his skin. 

Then it stops. 

Usually by this point, Gerard is floating in this nice foggy softness. He’d feel boneless and Frank would coax him to bed, drape Gerard over the bed and take care of his abused flesh. He’d whisper sweet things to him, bring him back up from his safe headspace to an equally safe and warm reality. 

That’s not what happens. 

He’s released from the cross and Gerard drops to his knees, unsure how he was even being kept up before. He scrambles to get the blind fold off and when he does he almost wishes it was back on because he sees people staring at him and Gerard wonders if they can see how fucked he is. If they can tell that he’s a mess. He’s pretty sure he’s got snot running down his chin, something that Frank would have cleaned off him by now. 

He doesn’t look up at the dom. He sees his feet though, sees that he’s taking a step towards Gerard and Gerard flinches. 

“Hey, it’s ok,” the dom says soothingly, but he doesn’t move any closer to Gerard. 

Gerard has enough of his mind to reach out and get dressed, stumbling when he tries to step into his pants. He can tell the dom wants to help him, but he’s not going to move any closer to Gerard. And Gerard is glad of that at least. He doesn’t know if he can stand being touched right now. 

The fabric of his clothes feel barbed wire against his sensitive skin. He feels a little dampness against his shirt and he’s not sure if it’s from his skin breaking or sweat. He’s not sure he really wants to know. 

“Are you--”

Gerard turns the other way and staggers away. He knows he probably broke whatever rule this stupid place has. Thinks that maybe he should have apologized to that guy, he didn’t do anything wrong really.

But Gerard can’t be here anymore. 


	7. Chapter 7

Getting home is fucking Hell. 

He’s not all the way there, but not safely under either. He’s in the uncomfortable in between, the kind that reminds him of being fucked up, but being sober enough to care about the weird looks he’s getting. He knows he looks wrecked, that his makeup is smeared down his face and he’s got snot and dried tears on his chin. 

He also knows that he should have texted Pete. Knows that he should have taken the time to find him, but it was like he was just moving on instincts. He just knew that he had to leave, that he had to get out of there. 

Mikey’s sitting against his front door smoking a cigarette when he stumbles up the steps. 

“Jesus,” Mikey breathes, “There you are. Pete’s worried sick and--Gee?”

Gerard trips over his own shoe and huh, he doesn’t really remember putting on shoes. Mikey catches him before he busts his lip on the railing of the steps. “Fuck,” Mikey says softly, “Let’s get you inside.”

Gerard doesn’t answer, he doesn’t really want to talk. It’s safer this way, because if he opens his mouth he thinks he’s going to start screaming or crying again. 

Gerard pulls out of Mikey’s hold as soon as they get into the apartment, his skin still feels like it’s not even attached to him and he thinks it’ll just fall off if someone touches it. And he doesn’t know why he’s acting like this. It’s almost like he’s not even in his body. Like he’s looking over himself and shouting “what the fuck is wrong with you?” but neither of them have the answer. 

Mikey tugs on Gerard’s shirt sleeve, and Gerard is so thankful. So fucking thankful that Mikey knows him the way he does. He used to think it was annoying, having someone so in tune with his mind that he couldn’t hide anything from him. It was horrible when they were teenagers because Gerard just wanted to blend in and disappear but Mikey always saw him. And then when he was fucked up, Mikey was there to poke through the fog, and it’s just not fair. How Mikey is always there when he’s trying to self destruct. 

But there’s something bone deep in him this time that’s grateful. Because he doesn’t know what’s going on. Just knows that he’s messed up. And it’s a new kind of messed up. Not done by alcohol, because he knows that kind. He knows the buzzy cacophony of being drunk. Knows that everything seems loud and chaotic when he’s drunk, but that he’s on the same wavelength so it’s not as scary. 

This is like sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool when kids laugh and throw water noodles at each other overhead. It’s like hearing Mikey yelling at him above the water, telling him that it’s not funny anymore, but Gerard just sees his mouth moving. He knows that he’s upset, but he can’t piece it all together because there’s this whooshing in his ears and chlorine burning his eyes. 

“I don’t know, just please get over here.”

Gerard thinks he’s cold because he feels himself shaking, but he also feels hot. Not the hot and cold in a feverish way, just in the kind that doesn’t make any sense. It’s like he’s having sensations but he can’t piece them together into an experience. Like eating chocolate cake when you're sick. It’s hard to taste anything without being able to smell, at least that’s what Gerard remembers from school. He’s not really sure he believes you have to be able to smell to taste. He’s never really paid attention though to make an opinion, but it just seems a little far fetched. 

“It’s the pharmacies trying to make a quick buck,” Gabe would say. Gerard sort of misses Gabe, he always made Mikey laugh in this weird way that Gerard’s never been able to do. It’s the kind where Mikey’s laughter sorta gets caught in his throat like Gabe’s pulled it from him unwillingly. 

Whenever Gerard thinks about Mikey’s boyfriends he gets a little sad because he doesn’t know if Mikey is happy. He thinks he’s been a bit of a shit brother for not asking him if he’s happy. Because Mikey is always taking care of Gerard, but Gerard can’t even remember the last time he asked him about his life. Not the shallow questions like “how’s work?” or “what did you do last weekend?” or even “do you really think we need another Batman movie?”. He doesn’t know what Mikey thinks about when he can’t sleep at three in the morning. And he thinks maybe not all brothers know that, but Gerard and Mikey used to know that about each other because they used to be up at three in the morning together. 

“Gee?”

Gerard blinks, then tries again because he thinks that it’s a bit silly for Frank to be standing in front of him like this. 

“Gerard?” Frank says softer, but he’s closer and when Gerard blinks again. Frank is kneeling by the bed and he’s a few inches from his face. 

He doesn’t want to be touched right now. But he wants Frank to touch him. 

Gerard leans his head forward and his forehead rests against Frank’s and it’s like that small skin to skin contact breaks him. 

The illusion is shattered, whatever bubble he had been in has popped and the world hits him way too hard. The air feels too harsh on his skin, like the heater is on and blowing scalding air on him. The bed is too hard, the sheets scratchy and pulling at the fabric of his clothes which pull at the marred skin on his back. Gerard whimpers and it morphs into a sob, then a full on breakdown. 

“Ok, ok,” Frank murmurs, reaching for him but his hands hover over him because Gerard’s sure Mikey told him not to touch him. 

But Gerard reaches for him and sobs, “ _ Frank _ .”

Frank wraps his arms around him loosely, not hugging as much as shielding Gerard from the bedroom. Like it’s the enemy. 

“I’ve got you, baby,” Frank whispers, “You’re safe, ok? You’re safe now, I’m right here.”

Gerard settles a little at that, the part of his mind that’s looking for something to submit to appeased. Frank said he was safe now, it was ok to relax again. 

“Mikey, can you get some water and something with sugar?” Frank asks quietly once Gerard’s sobs die down to soft hiccups.

Gerard likes how soft it sounds and it makes him want to be in Frank’s apartment with all the blankets. He wants to drape across his bed and watch the light filter through his tapestry and paint them in colors. 

Frank strokes Gerard’s hair while they wait for Mikey to come back. He’s got a bottle of water and a packet of fruit snacks. 

“Thanks,” Frank says, “This is perfect.”

Frank starts to move Gerard, but it makes his clothes pull again and Gerard cries out. 

“Ok,” Frank says and he stops trying to move Gerard. “Let’s look at your back first, can you roll on your stomach?” And then to Mikey, “I’ve got him. Call Pete and tell him that Gerard’s alright.” And Gerard is thankful, he really doesn’t want Mikey to see how bad it is.

Gerard waits to move until he hears the bedroom door shut softly, then he closes his eyes. He feels Frank pulling up his shirt and hears him swear softly, “Fuck, babe, why...ok, it’s ok.”

It takes a bit, but Frank gets Gerard’s clothes off with Frank’s help. Gerard would have thought it would make it worse, feeling naked again. But it’s easier to remember that he’s safe when he can smell Frank’s dollar store deodorant and can hear him sucking his tongue on the roof of his mouth--something he always does when he’s upset. 

He keeps his hand on Gerard’s shoulder as he moves so that he can dig out the tube of Arnica that they keep in the nightstand. Gerard flinches at first when Frank dabs the first bit of cream onto his back. “Easy,” Frank murmurs, and Gerard relaxes instantly. It’s already helping, whatever Frank is doing, it’s helping. And it’s not even the cream, though maybe that’s helping too, it’s just Frank being here and talking to him, touching him, putting him back together after he tore himself apart on that cross. 

“Did you guys do any sort of aftercare at all?” Frank asks, and there’s a slight edge to his voice. 

“I ran,” Gerard says, and he hates how hoarse his voice sounds. 

“Did you safeword?”

“No.”

Frank doesn’t say anything to that, just rubs the cream gently over Gerard’s back, ass, and back of thighs. “Alright, think you can sit up and drink some water for me?”

Gerard knows the question is rhetorical, so he lets Frank help move him carefully so he doesn’t anger his healing skin. Frank pulls the sheet loose from the bed and drapes it over Gerard, and Gerard likes how light it is. It doesn’t feel suffocating right now and he’s just hit by how well Frank knows him. Knows what he needs. And then it  _ angers _ him, because if Frank knows him like this, why would he fuck with his head?

Frank hands him the water bottle and Gerard debates ignoring it just out of spite, but he doesn’t want to fight with Frank. Not right now. Not when everything he’s doing feels so good and it’s making him feel more put together. He doesn’t feel as scatterbrained as he did before. 

He almost gets half the water bottle down before Frank hands him the packet of fruit snacks, and by the time he’s finished those Gerard feels back to normal. Sorta. He still feels a little shaken and he’s fucking exhausted. 

Frank kicks off his shoes and stands up to pull his jeans off before sliding under the sheet with Gerard. Gerard watches him look through the blankets, then under the pillows before he finds the remote. He turns on the television and sorts through the channels until he finds a cooking show. Then he turns the volume down and leans over to turn off Gerard’s lamp before laying down and holding out his arms. 

Gerard fills them. 

*

Gerard’s always been the kind of guy who counts down the minutes to the weekend, but he’s  _ really _ fucking happy it’s Saturday. He couldn’t imagine going to work today, not when he feels like he’s been hit by a train. But then he hears movement in his kitchen and remembers that Frank stayed over last night and he would fucking do anything to be at work right now instead of facing Frank.

He debates how probable it is for him to slip out of his bedroom window, but thinks it’s maybe not worth the broken leg. And then he wonders if Mikey is still here, because at least he could run some interference--but he’s pretty sure Mikey left after Frank told him he had things under control. Mikey’s a really good brother, but sticking around to watch Gerard get put back together after a rough BDSM scene is a little much even for him.

The bedroom door opens before Gerard’s had time to consider another escape route, but at least Frank’s brought coffee. “Hey,” Frank says softly, handing him a mug. 

Gerard takes a sip before saying, “Hey.”

“How are you feeling?” He asks. 

Gerard blushes, “Fine.”

There’s this sickening flipping in his stomach and it reminds him of those mornings after nights out at the bar. How he’d wake up and become flooded with flashes of embarrassing moments. This was like that, only Gerard would argue it’s almost worse. 

“I’m not just asking about your back,” Frank points out, tilting his head and trying to meet Gerard’s eyes.

“Fine,” Gerard says again, taking another sip of his coffee and then he squeaks when Frank takes it away, “Hey!”

“Yeah, no, you can get this back after you tell me the fucking truth,” Frank says, holding his coffee mug away. 

Gerard debates tackling him for it but he thinks sloshing hot coffee on Frank will only make him angrier. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“You can probably start by telling me what the hell happened to you last night,” Frank says. 

“I think that’s a little obvious,” Gerard mumbles. 

Frank pinches the bridge of his nose and exhales loudly. “Do you realize that things could have been much worse? Like, you fucking remember bits of last night right? How you wouldn’t even let  _ Mikey _ touch you? You were fucked, Gee,  _ fucked _ and it could have been  _ worse _ you--”

“I’m sorry,” Gerard says softly. 

Frank drops his hand and Gerard feels that cold hollow feeling that he always got when his parents would say they weren’t mad, they were just disappointed. “If you want to go out and find other people--that’s your decision I guess, but you have to take care of yourself.”

Gerard wants to tell him that he doesn’t want other people, not really. And he’s a little peeved maybe that Frank doesn’t seem more jealous. And Gerard knows that’s a fucked up thing to think, but it worms it’s way in his brain and he just can’t help it. 

“Why didn’t you safeword?” Frank whispers.

Gerard shrugs. 

“You do know,” Frank says.

“Do you mean last night, or in general?”

Frank shifts and sets Gerard’s coffee on the ground next to the bed. Gerard looks at it forlornly. “Let’s start with last night.”

“I didn’t want him to stop,” Gerard says simply. 

Frank narrows his eyes. “Why?”

Gerard looks down at his hands in his lap and he pulls the sheet closer around him, suddenly remembering how naked he is right now in front of Frank. He feels like every inch of him is on display, even the ugly bits deep inside of him and he’s not sure if this is going to be the end of Gerard. He’s not sure how he’ll come back from this, but he also knows that he can’t keep doing this thing with Frank half assed. “I felt like I deserved it.”

He doesn’t look up, but he can feel the heartbreak in Frank’s eyes. And then he feels Frank’s hand circle around Gerard’s leg. “Gerard, look at me.”

Frank squeezes his leg and Gerard sighs, looking up. Frank’s looking at him like Gerard is his whole world and it’s really fucking confusing. He doesn’t understand any of this. Why Frank is still here, why he’s taking care of Gerard. Why Mikey fucking called him in the first place. 

“You don’t deserve to hurt like that,” Frank says gently, then he reaches out and strokes his cheek. Gerard holds his gaze for a moment, lets himself believe that what he’s seeing in Frank’s eyes is really love, that he’s not just pitying Gerard--that he’s not just being a decent human being and helping him out after he fucked up again. But then it’s too much, and Gerard pulls away. 

“Look,” Frank starts, “This isn’t working anymore. I don’t know if it ever was really, but...I don’t know why--or  _ what _ you were looking for last night…this isn’t working.”

Gerard brings his knees to his chest and rests his cheek on top of them, looking at the wall so he can pretend he’s got himself under control. “Ok,” he breathes.

“Ok?” Frank asks, sounding annoyed.

Gerard shrugs. 

“Damn it, Gerard, fucking talk to me for once,” Frank growls. 

Gerard’s head snaps up. “Me? You don’t--I don’t know where I stand with you! I don’t know what you fucking want from me!”

Frank looks like he’s just been slapped in the face and he gets off the bed. Good, Gerard thinks, maybe he’ll leave and let Gerard just wallow in peace. Then he turns back around and glares at Gerard. “I don’t want you to go off and let some asshole whip you until you’re a fucking mess!”

“No one asked you--”

“Mikey did,” Frank bites back, “Because you were crying and mumbling about fucking swimming pools.”

“I don’t--”

“And do you know  _ why _ ?” Frank challenges, stalking back towards the bed. Gerard crosses his arms and glares back. “Because you were in subspace and you didn’t let anyone take care of you. You were in whatever fucked up place in your head, thinking you  _ deserved _ that pain and then you just fucking hopped on a bus like nothing was wrong. That’s not ok, Gerard!”

“I wouldn’t have even been there if--” Gerard starts then he stops and looks away, glad his arms are crossed so Frank can’t see his hands shaking. 

“If what?”

Gerard shakes his head and he feels his eyes growing thick with tears, which is just fucking great. He wants Frank to leave. But he also wants him to hug him, and it’s so annoying. He just wants to go to bed and start today over. 

“If what?” Frank repeats, softer. 

“If you weren’t taking other people home,” Gerard whispers. 

“You never told me not to.”

Gerard thinks back to the night at the show, how Frank had paused. “I didn’t know I was allowed to.”

“Fuck,” Frank breathes, sinking back on the bed. He lays out on his back and stares at the ceiling. 

Gerard agrees and wraps his arms around his legs, resting his head on his knees again. Gerard has never been brave. He’s trying to think of a time where he showed a lick of courage, something to draw inspiration from but he can’t think of anything. There were never those cliche big brother moments where Gerard stood up to Mikey’s bullies. He never made the first move, never asked a girl out to the dance. He didn’t do anything that made him the center of attention.. He always ducked out of parties early. Always apologize so he wouldn’t have to deal with confrontation. Would look down at the floor when he bumped into someone and then scurry away. He was not a brave guy. 

But he has to now. Because if he doesn’t, then whatever this is with Frank will be gone. Frank’s right, it’s not working. 

“I don’t want you to be with anyone else,” Gerard whispers against his knees, then when Frank doesn’t say anything he adds, “And I don’t want to be with anyone but you.”

There’s stillness, then he feels Frank’s hands cup his cheeks, coaxing Gerard to look up. When he does, Gerard’ breath is caught in his throat because Frank’s got this relieved look on his face. Like he’s been carrying this huge weight on his shoulders and Gerard finally told him he could set it down. And Gerard hadn’t known it was like that for him too. That Frank was hurting and waiting for Gerard, didn’t think he was worth all that pain. 

Frank leans in and kisses him, soft and sweet. Then whispers, “Ok,” and kisses him again.

They’re careful with Gerard’s back when they shift so that Gerard is flat against the mattress. Frank shrugs out of one of Gerard’s hoodies that he must have helped himself to this morning, then steps out of his boxers before kneeling on the bed between Gerard’s legs. He smiles, and it looks too sweet on Frank’s face. Too innocent and silly right before he leans down to nuzzle Gerard’s hardening cock. Gerard arches up and feels the slight pull at his back, but the pain ignites something in his belly. Something waking up and circling upwards towards Frank. Gerard gasps at the first swipe of Frank’s tongue, teasing and slightly tentative. 

And Gerard understands why, this feels all new. But it’s odd, because this isn’t new. Frank knows Gerard’s body more than anyone, knows what he likes and how far to take him. Frank knows Gerard’s body more than Gerard does, how to bring him the exact kind of release he needs. But they always had some sort of distance between each other, or at least that’s what they let themselves believe.

There’s nothing there now. Nothing but Frank’s teasing licks and his soft fingers ghosting down the curve of Gerard’s ass. 

“Please,” Gerard whispers. 

Frank hums and strokes Gerard with more intent. “You don’t have to beg, baby, I’m all yours,” he murmurs, leaning over to get lube out of Gerard’s nightstand. “You can have anything you want.”

Gerard wants. He’s about to tell him but his voice is stolen from him as Frank swallows Gerard down, feeling himself hit the back of Frank’s throat. He slides his fingers through Frank’s hair and grips tight, pulling him off just a little then tilting his hips up. Frank moans and goes pliable in Gerard’s hands, sparking that fire in Gerard. He brings his other hand to Frank’s hair and holds him still as he fucks up into Frank’s mouth. Frank reaches down to wrap his hand around his own cock and Gerard tightens his hold in Frank’s hair, pulling hard. “No, don’t touch yourself.”

Gerard smiles a little at the shiver that rocks through Frank, and it twists into a gasp as Frank slicks his fingers and slides two inside Gerard. “Frankie,  _ fuck _ ,” he whines. 

He’s fucking Frank’s mouth in earnest now, thrusting up hard and feeling his thighs tremble when Frank gags, saliva stringing down his mouth and pooling on Gerard’s skin. Frank’s not even moving his fingers, just letting Gerard’s thrusts rock him up into his mouth, then back against his fingers. Gerard knows he’s not going to last long, not with the sheets rubbing against the marks on his back, sending shocks through his body. It’s the good kind of pain, the kind that makes Gerard breathless in the best ways. The kind that makes Gerard whine, “Frank, Frank,  _ Frank _ ,” and then buck up into Frank’s mouth, feeling Frank try to swallow as much as he can. 

Gerard shivers and gasps at the warm liquid dripping onto his hip. He opens his eyes and, “You’re so gorgeous,” he whispers to Frank. His eyes are bright, lashes wet and clumped together. His cheeks are flushed, mouth red and swollen. And there’s a pearly sheen coating his chin, letting drips fall onto Gerard. 

Gerard relaxes his grip in Frank’s hair, rubbing soothingly at Frank’s scalp. Frank’s breathing hard, and Gerard can see his hands twitching to touch himself but Gerard hasn’t given him permission to yet. He strokes down his cheeks. “Fuck me,” he murmurs, pulling him down to kiss his surprised lips. He licks at the stickiness on his lips, then laps at the mess on his chin before leaning back to get a condom.

Frank’s taking the “no touching” rule seriously, so Gerard grins and puts the condom on him. He gasps as Frank removes his fingers, but then he’s sliding in and  _ oh _ fuck, he's so sensitive. Frank sinks in until he bottoms out, reaching down to hook Gerard’s leg over his hip, stroking the tender skin at the back of his thigh. Gerard whimpers, it’s almost too much. Feels like every nerve of his is vibrating and screaming out to Frank. 

“Yours,” Frank murmurs, rocking his hips slowly.

He trails soft kisses against Gerard’s jaw, whispering things too quietly for Gerard to hear, but he feels them. Feels how soft and beautiful it all is. Then the crescendo builds, and Frank’s holding Gerard’s hips down to the mattress swearing at Gerard’s, “Come on, come on, please, fuck,  _ please _ .”

Frank gathers Gerard’s wrists in his hand and pins them above his head, his other hand gripping his thigh and Gerard’s crying out at the feeling of his fingers digging into the wounded skin. 

“So good,” Gerard whimpers as Frank fucks into him with reckless abandonment, each drag of his cock against his prostate has him feeling like he’s going to black out. 

And then when he’s certain he’s going to spontaneously combust, Frank’s tensing, his hand squeezing tightly,  _ perfectly _ , against Gerard’s wrists and he lets out a choked noise. 

Frank releases Gerard’s wrists and he sags against Gerard. Gerard takes his freed hand and strokes down his back, smiling at Frank shuddering against him and he thinks that maybe he should be brave more often. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the love on the last few chapters <3

“I think we should start over,” Frank murmurs against Gerard’s ear. 

Gerard furrows his brows and watches Frank’s marshmallow catch fire. “What do you mean?”

They’re camped out in Gerard’s living room. Gerard is sitting on the floor between Frank’s legs and leaning back against his chest as he roasts marshmallows over the coffee scented candle that Mikey brought over when he complained that Gerard’s apartment smelled like mildew and cigarettes. Frank brings the marshmallow that’s impaled on a fork to Gerard. “Blow,” he instructs softly. 

Gerard grins and blows the fire out, watching the way the sugar crinkles into a crunchy black coating. Frank kisses Gerard just below his ear and warns quietly, “Careful,” as Gerard pulls it off the fork and takes a bite. Frank chuckles at the gooey, sticky mess that coats Gerard’s fingers and he takes his hand before sucking on his fingers, lingering well after the sugar has been cleaned off. 

“You’re distracting me,” Gerard accuses, but there’s no venom in his voice. 

Frank grins mischievously and kisses him, licking a little at the marshmallow traces on the corner of his mouth. “We need to start over. With the whole BDSM stuff.”

Gerard’s stomach drops, and he’s starting to understand why Frank’s being all soft and sweet with him. “Am I doing something wrong?”

Frank frowns. “No, hey,  _ no _ ,” he says, taking Gerard’s chin in between his index finger and thumb. “We just sorta went about things the wrong way.”

“It works for us,” Gerard insists. 

Frank smiles gently at him. “Some parts do. But, I don’t know…” he trails off, letting Gerard’s chin go and sticking another marshmallow onto the fork. He sets it over the candle and says quietly, “Last night sorta put some things into perspective.”

Gerard stiffens. He knew that he had gotten off way too easily, that they would have more to talk about. And it’s a little easier, knowing that Frank wants to be all in with Gerard now. But there’s still this nagging part in the back of his mind that’s telling him that Frank’s going to leave Gerard if he fucks this up. If he gets clingy. If he says the wrong thing. If he doesn’t live up to Frank’s expectations. 

“Like what?”

Gerard watches Frank rotate the marshmallow over the flame. “Like the fact we never talked about limits. We just jumped in and I trusted you to tell me if things got too bad.”

“And that’s worked.”

“No,” Frank says, “Last night is proof of that.”

“You didn’t do that,” Gerard argues, not understanding where Frank is going with this. They’ve been doing fine. The scenes they do haven’t been the issue with their relationship. It’s been the uncertainty, uncertainty that’s been cleared up. So why is Frank still poking at that bruise? 

“But it could have been,” Frank says, and Gerard can hear the tightness in his voice--the kind that pulls at Frank when he’s trying to stay in control. “It could have been me pushing you like that so easily. And you wouldn’t have stopped me either.”

“You would have put me back together.”

“Gerard,” Frank scolds lightly, “That’s not the point, and you know it. Why don’t you safeword?”

“I did that night at the party with you,” Gerard points out. 

“That’s true, you did,” Frank agrees, and Gerard feels a small swell of pride blossom in his chest, “But I think that might have had more to do with you being surrounded by a lot of people. I think you were safewording  _ them _ not me.”

Gerard considers that, and he wants to argue but he’s not really sure he would believe his own argument.    


“I think that if it was just us and I pushed you further than you were comfortable going, you wouldn’t safeword,” Frank continues. 

“You know--”

“Sometimes I don’t,” Frank cuts him off, “And sometimes I want to take you further than I do, but I don’t because I don’t trust you to safeword out if you need to.”

Gerard frowns at the marshmallow. 

“What is it that’s stopping you from using your safeword?” Frank asks, bringing the marshmallow up to his mouth and blowing the flame out. “Last night you said it’s because you felt like you deserved to hurt. Is that the same when you’re with me?”

“No,” Gerard says quickly, “No, never.”

“Ok, then why?”

Gerard’s glad he’s facing away from Frank, it makes this a little easier, but that nagging is getting louder in his mind. It’s shouting, warning him not to tell him the truth. Gerard takes a deep breath and turns in Frank’s arms, curling into him. Frank hums softly, and Gerard warms at the sound, feels safe when Frank cradles him closer. “I get worried that if I safeword out, you won’t want to do this with me anymore.”

Frank rests his chin on top of Gerard’s head. “Babe, that’s not true at all.”

Gerard nuzzles at Frank’s neck, breathes in the tobacco still lingering there from their last cigarette. “I don’t know what I’m doing. If I’m doing it right or if I’m enough or--or, I don’t--” Frank cuts him off by slipping two fingers into his mouth. 

“Shh,” he soothes, and Gerard’s a little stunned at first. But he sucks at the fingers, tasting the lingering sticky sugar and then the taste that’s all Frank. And he’s a little relieved to have something to focus on. “You’re so good, Gerard. Nothing you could do would disappoint me, especially using your safeword. This is supposed to be a good time for us, right? That’s why we started this.”

Gerard nods slightly. 

“You remember when you used the flogger on me the first time?” Frank asks. 

Gerard nods again. 

“It was hard for you, right? You were scared you would hurt me,” Frank says, “But you trusted me to tell you if something was wrong, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Gerard says around Frank’s fingers, starting to catch on. 

“You’d be upset if you ended up hurting me really bad because I didn’t speak up,” Frank says, removing his fingered and rubbing the saliva on Gerard’s bottom lip. 

“You’re right, I’m sorry,” Gerard whispers. 

Frank takes a bite of the marshmallow he’s forgotten and then says, “Which is why I think we should start over. Talk about limits and stuff.”

“But I don’t know anything,” Gerard says. 

“You know some,” Frank says, “Sometimes you don’t like to be blindfolded. And you don’t like exhibitionism.”

“See?” Gerard says, and he knows he sounds a bit childish, “you already know then, why--”

“Because,” Frank says, “It’s something we should have done in the beginning.”

Gerard looks up at him. “Why didn’t you push it then?”

Frank’s jaw clenches, and Gerard can see the story start to form in Frank’s mind. Sees him trying to piece it together and figure out how he wants to tell it to Gerard. “Because, I didn’t want it to be the same as last time for me.”

He knew that Frank had done this before, that he was still relatively new, but he knew enough to have some knowledge. Gerard had thought that he just didn’t really vibe with the parties and scene, that he had tried it then put it to the side until Gerard came along and reminded him of it. 

“I used to play with this guy, you met him at the party,” Frank starts, “I didn’t know what I was doing. I had seen shit on porn and it interested me and the guy that I had started to see was into it. So I thought, perfect, right? I was pretty naive, I didn’t really know what I wanted. He was a dom and he wasn’t like us, he didn’t want to switch, which was fine at the time I guess since I didn’t really know any better. I didn’t mind being a sub.”

Gerard pets at Frank’s shirt. “Until you did.”

Frank’s mouth sets into a hard line. “Yeah. It wasn’t that I didn’t like submitting, just not all the time. I like having control, I like”--he smoothes the hair off Gerard’s forehead and smiles fondly-- “I like handcuffing you and bending you over the couch.”

Gerard blushes and then he nods, gesturing for him to continue. 

“But he didn’t want that. And he had these rules that I just really didn’t like. I felt too boxed in,” Frank says, “So I wanted out. And the thing was, bringing that into our relationship ruined it. When I didn’t want to sub anymore, he didn’t want to date me anymore.”

“That’s why…” Gerard trails off. 

Frank nods. “That’s why I was trying to keep space between us,” he says softly, “I know it doesn’t make sense now, but it did at first, keeping you at a distance so I didn’t mess up whatever it was we were doing. And then when I realized that I didn’t want you so far away, it was too late and you were acting like you wanted the space too.”

“I was--”

“I know,” Frank says. 

Gerard smirks up at him. “Stop cutting me off.”

Frank grins and kisses him. “Sorry.”

*

Frank had been pretty adamant about not doing a scene with Gerard again until they had gone over their limits. And Frank didn’t really want to do a scene until Gerard’s back had healed a bit more. Gerard tried to insist he wasn’t in pain anymore, but the look on Frank’s face made him realize that there was more to it. 

Going to work on Monday had sucked after spending the weekend curled around Frank, only coming up for air to cook marshmallows or smoke a cigarette. They had worked in a shower somewhere in there too, but Gerard’s not sure it counts if actual washing never took place. He’s pretty sure he’d be more into showers if they always came with blowjobs. 

He’s not sure if his good mood has something to do with the fact that Frank had kissed him against his car this morning, tasting like coffee and Gerard’s spearmint toothpaste, until Gerard had to push him off so he’d have time to make his train. Frank had given him a wicked grin then got in his own car. When he got to the office, he had a text waiting for him:

_ From: Frank _

_ 8:47AM _

_ This is me texting you so you don’t freak out. _

_ To: Frank _

_ 9:08 AM _

_ This is me not freaking out. _

__

And his good mood carries on to lunch. He hesitates by the break room with his sad peanut butter sandwich and bag of marshmallows--which he’s sure Frank snuck into his bag as a joke--until a guy wearing a Metallica shirt under his opened button up leans back in his chair to look at Gerard. “You coming in? Promise, I don’t bite.”

Gerard takes a tentative step in and breathes a little easier when he realizes there’s only one other pair eating in the breakroom. They’re off to the side, waving their hands around and talking animatedly about the best time to plant carrots. Gerard sits at the table with Metallica dude and lowers his voice to say, “You’re not going to make me talk about gardening, right?”

Metallica dude laughs and shakes his head. “I don’t really eat vegetables unless they’re dehydrated and in ramen.”

Gerard grins. This is ok. “Oh, good.”

“I’m Ray,” he says, and he does this cute little awkward wave that makes Gerard feel more comfortable right away. And, now that he thinks about it, he’s seen this guy around. He doesn’t sit in the cluster of cubicles that Gerard and the other “artists” are at, but he’s seen him at the copy machine or walking to the bathrooms here and there. “I’m the office administrator.”

“We have one of those?” Gerard hears himself say, then he blushes, because maybe that was sorta rude to say. 

Ray laughs. “Yeah, yeah, I know. But someone has to put up the positive quotes on the bulletin board.”

Gerard’s brows knit together in confusion. 

“You don’t really leave your cubicle, do you?” Ray guesses. 

Gerard shakes his head and unwraps his sandwich. “Not really.”

“But you’re not new,” Ray says, “I’ve seen you around. Just felt like coming out of your cave today?”

Gerard shrugs. “Yeah, I’m trying this new thing where I’m not a loser.”

“Oh, well I’m not sure this is a great first step,” Ray grins, “I’m pretty much a self proclaimed loser myself.”

Gerard takes a bite of his sandwich. “You’re wearing a Metallica shirt.”

Ray’s smile just widens and he takes a bite of the ramen he’s got in front of him. Gerard doesn’t like making small talk, but Ray steers the conversation to interesting enough topics to keep Gerard engaged. He’s learned that Ray teaches guitar on the side, that he’s just working here until he’s saved enough money to open up his own shop where he can repair guitars and hold lessons. He even makes music on the side and Gerard pipes up with, “You should meet my brother Mikey, he’s pretty into the scene,” which makes Ray laugh and ask, “Oh my God, are you Mikey Way’s brother?” And Gerard has to chuckle at that, because he’s gotten that so many times since Mikey was a teenager. 

Ray asks questions that get Gerard to talk about himself, but aren’t invasive enough for him to shut down. He asks him what he’s been listening to which derails them a bit while they talk about different genres and how Gerard’s been slipping back into his obsession with Brit Pop. But then he talks about that DnD podcast he’s been listening to on the train and Ray practically turns into a cartoon character with his excitement. Which somehow leads to Gerard agreeing to go to this comic book shop to join Ray’s campaign he’s starting with some people he went to school with. Ray’s got this soft almost maternal vibe about him, that it makes it hard to say no to him. 

And Gerard’s sorta glad that Frank doesn’t come by that night. He needs some time to decompress what’s happened over the weekend. That Frank and him are together apparently, that Frank had been waiting for Gerard to make the move--and that makes Mikey laugh when he tells him that on the phone while eating fried rice over the sink. 

“You two are fucking idiots,” Mikey says, but he sounds happy. Like he can breathe easier now that Gerard’s laughing into the phone with him. 

He tells him about Ray and grins when Mikey starts gushing about him, how he’s this amazing guitar player and he’s got a pretty decent vinyl collection. 

“Wait,” Gerard says, “How well do you know this guy?”

There’s silence and Gerard giggles. “Oh.”

“It ended amicably,” Mikey insists, and Gerard believes him since Ray didn’t seem put off that Mikey was Gerard’s brother. “We just didn’t really have the chemistry. Not that he’s not great in bed--”

“Ok, ok,” Gerard sighs, “I don’t need to know specifics.”

“You realize you tell me--”

“Yeah,” Gerard says, around a mouthful of rice, “I know. And I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been leaning on you so much during all that.”

Mikey’s quiet for a moment, then, “You know I don’t care if you lean on me.”

Gerard sets his container of rice down and lights a cigarette instead. “There’s things I need to tell you,” he says softly, “But I’m not sure how yet.”

He hears a click of a lighter on the other end of the phone and Gerard smiles a little at that. “I’m usually pretty patient with you,” he replies, “Is it bad?”

“It’s kinda grey,” Gerard tries to explain. 

“You don’t do grey,” Mikey points out. 

“You’re always the exception,” Gerard tells him. 

*

“Ok, so there’s soft and hard limits,” Frank says, setting two identical pieces of paper with a checklist in front of Gerard.

“Ok,” Gerard says, frowning at the lists. 

When Frank had told him to come over for kinky shit, he thought that there’d be more handcuffs involved. Frank grins at him. “Soft limits are things you sorta want to do, but you’re anxious about it. Hard limits are absolutely off the table.”

Gerard nods, peering at the list and frowning. “I haven’t done the majority of these things.”

Frank sets out red, yellow, and green markers. “So mark anything red that you absolutely don’t want to try. Yellow for things you’d be willing to do, but are a little anxious of, and green for stuff you like or really want to try.”

“Yellow are soft limits?” Gerard asks, picking up the marker. 

Frank kisses his cheek. “You’re a quick learner.”

“So being blindfolded,” Gerard starts, “That’s a soft limit for me?”

“You tell me,” Frank says. 

“I mean, I’ve done it and sometimes it helps,” Gerard muses, sorta shocked by how easy it is to talk to Frank about this now that they’ve let down their walls. He still hears that nagging in the back of his mind, but he’s been trying to talk over it. “But other times it really freaks me out.”

“Like when?”

Gerard doesn’t really want to bring up the night at the other party, but he goes straight to how helpless he felt once the blindfold covered his eyes. How he didn’t have anything to ground him into the new experience, he didn’t have anything familiar to latch onto when he started slipping. “Maybe if we’re doing something new?” Gerard asks, “I don’t want to be blindfolded then.”

Frank nods and kisses his cheek again. “Ok, Gee.”

Gerard goes back to his list and marks ‘blindfold’ in yellow. “Why did you give me two lists?”

“One is for stuff that you’re thinking about being done to you and the other is stuff that you’re thinking about doing to me,” Frank says, then he winks, “Since you know, we have to complicate shit.”

Gerard grins. “I like it this way though.”

Frank holds his gaze for a moment, and he looks like he wants to smile but is too overcome by emotion to do it. And Gerard gets it, after their talk about Frank’s experience, he can understand why it’s a big deal for Gerard to be willing to switch with Frank. That he would  _ want _ to switch with Frank. 

Frank clears his throat and goes back to his list. Gerard tries to peer over his shoulder to see what he’s marking down but Frank laughs and covers his paper. “Eyes on your own paper,” he teases, “We’ll trade in a minute.”

Gerard sighs and looks at his list. He doesn’t fucking know, but he wants to try for Frank.  _ And yourself _ a voice that sounds oddly like Mikey scolds him. Gerard keeps the yellow marker in his hand, thinking that’s the safer color in all this. He marks ‘abrasion’, ‘biting’, ‘knife play’, ‘leash and collar’ in yellow, then adds ‘fisting’ in yellow with a blush. He frowns and looks up at Frank. “What’s figging?”

Frank laughs and sets down his marker. “It’s when you put a piece of ginger up your ass.”

Gerard flinches. “Um, why would you do that?”

He grins. “You might like it actually,” he chuckles, and Gerard’s breath quickens at how Frank’s eyes darken, “it’s painful, it burns... pretty intense.”

“You’ve done it before.”

Frank nods. 

So Gerard marks it yellow and then moves on. There’s things on the list that he didn’t even know should be negotiated, things that Gerard sorta thought were just a given, but apparently they require permission too. Things like ‘following orders’--but then he thinks about Frank and how he doesn’t really like to be boxed into a set of rules and it sorta makes sense. Wearing a collar he thought was a thing that most subs did, but it’s on the list so Gerard wonders if it’s a bigger deal than he thought. He marks both green and catches Frank’s quirk of lips at Gerard’s change of color. 

He finds it a little surprising how much he marks green. At first it’s just things that he and Frank have done that he likes. But then he finds a lot of things that he  _ wants _ to do, things that he can imagine Frank doing to him and he feels his cheeks getting red again. He frowns at ‘punishment’ and asks, “What does it mean by punishment?” 

Frank looks up from his list and frowns. “I don’t know if I’d be comfortable doing that to you.”

There’s been times when Gerard would push back against Frank in scenes, but it was mostly just for show and Frank would threaten him--though he’s never followed through on it. And then Gerard thinks about the way Frank sounded when he saw the marks on Gerard’s back and how upset he had gotten when Gerard told him he thought he had deserved them, and it makes sense why Frank wouldn’t want to punish Gerard now. “Ok, yeah, maybe you’re right.”

“We can always negotiate later,” Frank says softly, “If it’s something you want to do later. Just, I can’t do that right now with you.”

“Yeah,” Gerard agrees, then he reaches over to rub the back of Frank’s neck. Frank’s tense shoulders drop instantly and he exhales. 

Gerard waits until Frank’s breathing has evened out before going back to his list. He marks ‘punishment’ red and then marks a few other things that catch his eye. ‘Humiliation’, ‘exhibitionism’ and ‘whips’ get marked red quickly before he reads through the list and marks a few other things that make him wrinkle his nose. 

After going through the other list, feeling like he’s marked most of the things he’d be willing to do to Frank yellow, he sits back in his chair. 

“Ready to exchange?” Frank asks. 

Gerard nods and hands him his papers, blush deepening when he watches Frank look through them. He smiles at a few and Gerard feels his heart pounding against his chest. Frank reaches out and sets a hand on his knee. 

Gerard looks through Frank’s lists and isn’t all that surprised by a lot of it, though he grins widely at ‘wax play’ being marked in green and thinks about Frank’s reaction to the wax play scene they had seen at the party. 

Frank looks up at him and then leans in to kiss him. It’s slow, teasing and full of promise. “Ready to play?”He whispers against Gerard’s lips. 

Gerard nods shakily. He’s glad that Frank isn’t going to make him sit here and talk each thing out with him. Maybe he will later, but for now it looks like he knows that Gerard’s talked as much as he can today. “Yeah.”

Frank picks up Gerard’s list, scanning it then grinning mischievously. “Yeah, ok, I have an idea.”


	9. Chapter 9

Things are going really good. 

Gerard is getting out of bed with Frank still wrapped in the blankets. He makes his coffee and pours some in another travel mug to set on the nightstand so Frank can sip it as he slowly starts to wake up. Gerard packs his lunch, always adding a small bag of marshmallows now with a soft smile. And then by the time he’s ready to leave, Frank is yawning into the living room. 

Some days he’s at Frank’s apartment when he leaves for work. Frank’s pushed his clothes to one side of his closet so that Gerard can hang up a few work shirts for those days. And he starts buying the coffee that Gerard likes, and he even switches his toothpaste to the spearmint kind because he knows that’s Gerard’s favorite. 

Even work has gotten better because now he has someone to sit with at lunch or make faces at when they’re waiting for the copy machine to chug out their papers. He even goes with Ray to play DnD and it takes him a minute to get into character since he’s around a bunch of new people, but he’s surprised by how light he feels after they’ve spent hours hunched over dice and sheets of paper. He’s giddy and grinning when he comes home to Frank’s apartment and there’s this warmness in his chest that spreads, because coming to Frank is coming home. 

And the kinky stuff is  _ great _ . Gerard sorta wishes he and Frank had done this whole negotiation thing a lot earlier. Because they had something that worked before, but now it felt like they were thriving. Like the difference between eating food out of necessity and then adding spices and realizing that food could be  _ savored _ , that it could be explored and thrown together in different pleasing ways. 

Gerard’s still having a hard time looking at the kitchen knives without blushing profusely. 

Frank hadn’t tied Gerard up like the thought he might. He just stripped him down to nothing and laid him out on the bed before setting the knife down on the mattress next to Gerard’s hip. Gerard hadn’t been able to help the way his hands shook when he reached for Frank and Frank kissed each fingertip, licked between each finger and bit down on each knuckle until it felt like his hands had melted into smoldering liquid. 

And then Frank had moved his lips across Gerard’s body, making him immobile with just his mouth. Licking his body into submission and Gerard understood why he didn’t want to tie him down when he picked up the knife. It was an exercise of trust. Not just Gerard trusting Frank not to hurt him, but Frank trusting Gerard to be still enough to not hurt him. 

It had been the most intimate, most intense experience of his life, which seemed so wild to him since they hadn’t really done anything. Gerard had just been still, feeling the way the knife moved across his skin. Frank hadn’t cut him, didn’t even break the skin, he just brought the blade over Gerard’s skin in invisible shapes. He pressed the teeth of the blade against his thigh and held it there while Gerard focused on breathing and not moving even though every part of his mind was screaming at him. To move away from the blade, run and protect himself. To move towards the blade, feel the bite of the cut and then the stinging of the wound kissing the air, feel the sticky trail of blood trickle down his leg. 

After what felt like hours and minutes at the same time, Frank set the knife down and Gerard looked up at him with a huge grin. “Can we do that again?”

So things are great. Until the day that Gerard wakes up and he just can’t get out of bed. And Gerard doesn’t really understand why, but today just seems so daunting. He doesn’t want to get dressed, doesn’t want to drive to the train and sit next to a stranger wearing too much perfume. He can’t fathom walking into the office and sitting at his desk for eight hours. And he feels awful, but he really doesn’t want to talk to Ray even. 

Gerard presses his face into his pillow and he feels so fucking stupid that the alarm on his phone is still ringing and he doesn’t even have the energy to turn it off. 

Frank does. He sets Gerard’s phone on the nightstand and runs a hand down Gerard’s back. “Time to get up, sleepy,” Frank murmurs.

He’s trying not to cry, and thinks he’s doing a good job at it until he feels the pillow under him grow damp. Frank keeps rubbing his back for a moment, probably just trying to coax him awake. But the longer Gerard hides his face, the stiffer he feels Frank get until, “Gee?”

“I’m sorry,” Gerard breathes and he hopes that Frank just gets it. Because Frank’s seen Gerard when he gets worked up. He’s seen the way he circles around and round in his mind, is the one who mostly breaks him out of that cycle, but he hasn’t seen this. He hasn’t seen Gerard laying crumpled and broken. And for seemingly no reason. 

Because Gerard’s been selective with what he shows Frank. Even though they’ve built their shaky foundation on this give and take to soothe the darkness they both have in them, he’s been careful. Has let himself call and breakdown because he has a meeting. Rushed to Frank and knelt down because he had a stressful day at work. Had Frank bound him when he had spent too long around alcohol. But he’s never let Frank see him break just because his brain was broken. 

And it’s not fucking fair. He should be happy now. He’s got Frank. He’s got Mikey back home. And he has a fucking friend at work. He doesn’t understand why this is still happening to him. Doesn’t get why his body can’t just behave for once and it makes him cry more, but it’s not enough. Because he doesn’t even have the energy to cry the way he wants. Doesn’t have it in him to get up and scream, to trash his room, destroy something because he’s so angry with himself. So it festers. Just builds upon itself until Gerard feels like he’s this massive wound sensitive to even the air hitting his skin. 

“Do you want to call into work?” Frank asks quietly. 

He wants to ask Frank to do it for him, but he’s embarrassed enough. Frank drops his hand but stays close as Gerard shifts to sit up on the bed and pick up his phone. He stares at it, wondering what he’s even supposed to do. If he should make himself sound sick and say he has a cold. Does he tell the truth and say that he just feels like the world is too big today? What if they don’t believe him? What if they tell him he has to come into work? And Gerard’s eyes water at the thought of embarrassing himself and having to come into work anyway, to face them all. They’d know how much of a fucking mess he is. They’ll fire him. They’ll for sure fire him and then he’ll have to move in with Mikey or something and that’s just so fucking depressing that it actually pulls a sob from his throat. 

“Ok, hey, breathe,” Frank whispers, wiping the tears off Gerard’s cheeks. “What about Ray? Can you text him? He’s the office administrator, right?”

Gerard nods. Yeah, that could work. 

“Do you want me to do it?” Frank asks.

When Gerard doesn’t say anything, Frank takes the phone from Gerard and a weight is lifted from Gerard’s chest. Enough that he can lay back down and curl into a ball, closing his eyes and breathing out. 

*

“I have to go to work,” Frank whispers against Gerard’s ear. 

Gerard wants to ask him to stay, but he knows that Frank can’t afford to call into work too. Gerard at least gets sick days, Frank doesn’t get paid if he doesn’t go in. 

Frank squeezes Gerard and he sighs, because that feels so fucking good. Like Frank’s keeping all his insides in where they belong. “I called Mikey,” Frank continues, “He says he’s wrapping up things at the office and will be over in an hour.”

Gerard feels like crying again, but he’s not sure he has any tears left to spare after soaking his pillow all morning. “Shouldn’t have done that,” Gerard says, hating how pitiful he sounds, “I don’t need a babysitter.”

“I know you don’t,” Frank says, “I called him to make me feel better.”

He thinks Frank is lying to him to make him feel better, but it feels like the truth against his skin. Frank peppers more kisses along his neck. “Can I do something to help you before I have to leave? Want the wrist cuffs?”

Gerard thinks that maybe it would be awkward for Mikey to come over and see the cuffs on him, but Frank squeezes him again and the pressure feels so great that he just nods. He’s still got his face pressed into the pillow, but he can hear Frank going through the closet then the dip in the bed again. “Turn on your back for me,” he murmurs.

It shouldn’t be so much effort to just turn over, but somehow it is. He blinks up at Frank, trying to see if Frank’s freaking out. Trying to find the disgust in his face, the  _ what the fuck did I get myself into _ across his features. But Frank just secures the cuffs around Gerard’s wrists and leans down to press kisses into his palms. “Better?”

Gerard nods, because the pressure is grounding. It doesn’t fix anything. But when he turns back into the pillow, it’s easy to pretend the cuffs are Frank’s hands holding him down. Frank pulls the blanket up to Gerard’s shoulders and pets at Gerard’s wild hair. “Ok, I have to leave now. Mikey will be here soon.”

“Ok,” Gerard whispers. 

He hates himself for it, but he imagines Frank telling him he loves him as a goodbye, that this is just a normal day and Gerard isn’t barely holding himself together. That Frank would say it breezily, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Like being in love with Gerard could be easy. 

But he doesn’t say it. Frank just kisses his temple, then Gerard feels the bed move from him getting up. 

He follows the sound of Frank’s footsteps through the apartment, then the door opens and closes. 

And it’s silent. 

The silence doesn’t bother him at first, he thinks he’ll just close his eyes and go back to sleep. But he can’t turn his brain off enough to find slumber release. He’s got his eyes closed but all he can think about is how he’s not at work when he should be. He wonders what Frank texted Ray, if Ray thinks less of him now. If things will be weird tomorrow at work or if Ray won’t invite him to play DnD anymore. 

And then he remembers that Mikey is coming over and he both dreads and craves his brother’s attention. He wants to listen to Mikey tell him about his day, to sit on the bed next to him and talk like nothing is wrong and that he’s just here for a social visit. He’ll get that, Mikey won’t dive into the heavy stuff right away. Mikey’s really great at handling Gerard, knows to lower his defenses by talking about mundane topics like how Mikey found some really great dishes at the thrift store the other day or how the corner store by his house stopped carrying his favorite kind of gum. But then he’ll slowly fold into topics that Gerard won’t want to listen to. Like how Mikey’s worried about him or he’ll tell him again that he needs to see a therapist. 

Gerard thinks about texting Mikey to tell him he’s fine and that he’s actually going to run out to the store, so there’s no reason to come by. But by the time he’s actually talked himself into picking up his phone, he hears the front door open. 

He sighs and sets the phone down and thinks about sitting up, but that sounds like too much work. Mikey comes into his room and sets his bag down on the floor next to the door before kicking off his shoes and sliding into bed with Gerard. Gerard’s face twists up into what he assumes is a very ugly expression of him fighting the urge to cry and Mikey just coaxes his head to rest on his chest. “It’s ok, Gee,” Mikey whispers, “You can cry.”

So Gerard does. Not loud and detrimental like he imagines, instead he just lays on Mikey and lets the tears leak out without effort as he listens to Mikey telling him about the office drama. He plays with Gerard’s hair and tells him that Gabe’s been asking him out after work again. Mikey holds the conversation for both of them, knowing Gerard enough to answer the questions that he's is too tired to ask, but interested in hearing anyway. 

“I know,” Mikey muses, “I know that he’s the exact type of boy to break my heart, but it feels so good that I don’t even mind.”

Gerard smiles a little at that, because he can relate to it. 

“And yeah, I know I gave you shit about being in an unhealthy relationship,” Mikey continues, “But it’s not really unhealthy if we’re both on the same page. It’s not the same as it was with you and Frank. We talk.”

Gerard rolls his eyes and grips Mikey’s soft t-shirt lightly in his hand. 

“I don’t know what it is about him,” Mikey says, “I think it’s the same thing with Pete, you know? He’s wild and fun, and I like to think we balance each other out.” Mikey’s quiet for a moment, like he’s listening to Gerard talk, then he sighs, “I’m not replacing him with Pete.” Another pause before, “I know, I should move on from both of them. It’s hard.”

Gerard looks up at Mikey and quirks his eyebrow. 

Mikey laughs. “Both? Yeah if I can’t handle one, I doubt I could handle both.”

Mikey wipes at the corners of Gerard’s eyes. “Snuck up on you?”

“I was doing good.”

Mikey nods in agreement. “It happens,” he says gently, “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

He peers at Mikey, waiting, then when he doesn’t say it he sighs, “You want me to see a therapist.”

Mikey smiles smugly. 

Gerard rubs at his face and jumps a little when he feels Mikey’s fingers pulling at the cuff around Gerard’s wrist. “This helps?”

“Yeah, a little.”

“It’s not going to...help you deal with what’s in your head,” Mikey says, after pausing to consider his words. Gerard knows that he had wanted to say ‘fix you’, but Mikey doesn’t really think Gerard is broken. He’s told him that Gerard just thinks too much, that he feels too much and everything about this world pounds down on him because Gerard is so open. 

“It takes me out of my head.”

“You can’t always be out of your head,” Mikey tells him, “You have to find a way to be happy in there. Or at least tolerate it.”

“Therapy is supposed to help?” Gerard asks doubtfully. 

“Maybe medication too,” Mikey says softly, like if he says it quietly enough it won’t anger Gerard as much. 

He still squishes up his face and Mikey smiles knowingly. “You never gave it time to work.”

“They made me sleepy,” Gerard remembers. 

“Then you try another one,” Mikey tells him, “It’s not a one size fits all.”

“When did you get so smart?” Gerard grumbles, closing his eyes and remembering the blonde little kid that used to sit up with Gerard and read books about space and honeybees. 

Mikey taps on Gerard’s temple then says, “You’re always the exception.”

Mikey stays with Gerard until Frank comes back after his shift. He lays in bed with him, getting him to talk more and more until the fog starts to lift and Gerard feels like getting out of bed. Mikey doesn’t leave his side and follows him into the kitchen to talk with him as he builds a sandwich and declines when Gerard offers one to Mikey. 

“There’s only cheese and pickles on that,” Mikey say, wrinkling his nose. 

“This is a meat free household now,” Gerard tells him. 

“For Frank?” Mikey grins. 

“He doesn’t keep alcohol in his house because of me,” Gerard tells him softly. 

Mikey’s grin softens and he says, “Good.”

And Mikey sits at the counter while Gerard sprays a rag with disinfectant and wipes down the countertops, trying to get his body to move after being so stiff all day. It’s not much of a task, but he feels good moving and he thinks that he wishes he’d remember that whenever that heavy feeling comes back--but he never does. 

Frank smiles tentatively when he comes in and see Gerard out of bed and Gerard knows that he wants to say something about it, but he doesn’t. He just kicks his shoes off and sits next to Mikey. It’s nice, hearing them talk and Gerard isn’t really paying attention to what they’re saying, but he likes the sound of people who matter to him. 

Mikey gets up to leave, pats Gerard on his shoulder because he knows if he hugs Gerard he will probably cry again and they’ve come so far today. “I can come back tomorrow after work too if you need me.”

Gerard shakes his head, determined that he’ll be at work tomorrow. Mikey gives him a wink then goes to gather his shoes and bag from Gerard’s bedroom. He gives Frank a measured look then slips out of the apartment. 

*

“You had no right to do that!” Gerard shouts, following Frank down the hall. 

“I didn’t even say anything,” Frank huffs, “All I asked him was the number to call to set up an appointment.”

“Yeah, and now Ray knows that I need a therapist!” 

“So what?” Frank demands, turning around and nearly running into Gerard. 

“He’s...I want him to be my friend,” Gerard says. 

“And you think he won’t because you’re seeing a therapist?” Frank drawls, “That’s really fucked up, Gerard. Is that what--”

“No! But not everyone is...that isn’t the point!” Gerard yells, “The point is that you texted Ray without me knowing about it and that--”

“Mikey told me that your work offered--”

“--not for you to--”

“And I knew you wouldn’t--”

“Who the  _ fuck _ do you think you are!” Gerard demands, shoving at Frank. And fuck, that feels good. He’s got this rage boiling inside him. He knows that part of it is from laying in bed all day, wrapped up in that heavy feeling that pulls him through the bed. His emotions are always so haywire when he finally breaks free of it’s restraints and he just feels so on edge. 

Frank’s eyes darken. “Don’t push me again,” he says quietly, but stern and it pools in the bottom of Gerard’s belly. 

“What are you going to do about it?” Gerard taunts, and the rational part of his mind is wide eyed and demanding,  _ what the fuck are you doing? _

Frank shakes his head and takes three long steps to close the distance between them. Gerard holds his chin up defiantly and Frank wraps his hand around Gerard’s throat, not hard, just holding it there. “No,” he says calmly, “You don’t bait me into hurting you. If you want something, you ask for it.”

Gerard pulls at Frank’s wrist, wanting him to tighten his hold around his throat. But Frank just lets go and takes a step back, frustrating Gerard further because all he wants is a fight. He wants to meet resistance. Wants to hurt. And wants a release. But he doesn’t know how to put that into words, doesn’t know how to ask so he just stares helplessly at Frank with his hands balled up in fists and breathes, “Please.”

Frank looks at Gerard's fists and nods. “Ok, baby,” he says softly.

Gerard thinks he’s going to fall to his knees and scream if Frank leaves him like this, but Frank just pulls a chair from the kitchen table out, turning it to face Gerard then sits down. “Come here.”

Gerard lets out a sigh of relief and starts towards him before Frank says, “Wait,” Gerard stops and frowns,  _ please don’t change your mind. _ “Grab that wooden spoon.” Gerard’s stomach does a somersault, but he grabs the wooden spoon that’s sitting on the kitchen counter then goes to stand in front of Frank. 

Frank looks up at him and takes it. “Undress.”

Gerard doesn’t even process the action of undressing, doesn’t feel the slide of fabric or feel the metal of his zipper bite his fingertips. All he knows is he’s naked in front of Frank now and Frank reaches for his hand, pulling him closer then helping him bend over Frank’s lap. Gerard exhales shakily as he feels the blood rushing to his head, feels his legs tighten as he presses his feet down to the tiled kitchen floor. Frank rubs his hand soothingly over Gerard’s ass and he tries not to whine, tries not to demand that Frank hurry up already. 

“This isn’t a punishment,” Frank tells him, “Even though you’re being a complete asshole, this isn’t a punishment, got it?”

“Ok,” Gerard says. 

Frank slaps the back of his thigh and Gerard yelps. “What was that?”

“Yes, sir,” Gerard amends, feeling himself slip into the safety of this role. Where he doesn’t have to think about feeling like a failure for not being able to get out of bed to go to work. Where he doesn’t have to worry about Mikey leaving his job early to take care of him. Or Frank texting his new friend about their company’s counseling program. Here he doesn’t have to be an active participant, just gets to let go of everything and let Frank give him what he needs. 

Except Frank still doesn’t spank him, instead says, “You can ask for this, Gerard. This isn’t a bad thing, don’t make it that way.”

Gerard doesn’t say anything, just clenches his jaw and waits for Frank to finish his little speech and get on with the spanking part. But he curves his hand over Gerard’s ass. “You deserve to be happy.” And that pulls at Gerard’s chest, makes him feel breathless with it as it ricochets in his mind. Because all he can think about is being on that cross and feeling pain, feeling like he deserved every minute of that. He still believes that, deep down in that part that held him captive in his bed today, he deserves nothing but pain and ugliness.

“Say it,” Frank orders. 

Gerard shakes his head. He just wants to count his spankings and slip into his subspace where he’s safe and Frank will take care of him. He just wants to be out of his head for a little bit. He doesn’t want to play whatever game Frank is playing. 

“Say it, or get dressed,” Frank says a bit sharper, “I’m not going to hit you if you think that this is a punishment. I told you, that’s a hard limit for me.”

“It’s not a punishment,” Gerard says quickly.  _ Please _ , he begs silently,  _ please just make it hurt _ . 

“That’s not what I told you to say,” Frank says, still stroking Gerard’s skin and it’s too fucking soft. “Tell me that you deserve to be happy.”

Gerard doesn’t know why this order is so hard for him. He’s gotten onto his knees no problem. Crawled on the floor, held his hands behind his back to be handcuffed, opened his mouth to get fucked, he’s fucking held still while Frank ran a knife over him--but this is harder than all of that. To just say-- to believe that he deserves to be happy. 

Frank runs his hand down his back and cards his fingers through his hair. “Come on, sweetheart,” he whispers and it breaks Gerard. Makes him feel so exposed, so raw and still wound up and needy. He’s bubbling with emotion, wants to scream still from this morning and he sobs, “I deserve to be happy.”

The slap of the spoon against the flesh of his ass startles another sob from him and  _ thank you, thank you, thank you _ . “One.”

“I don’t want you to count,” Frank says rubbing the spoon against his thigh, “I just want you to focus and think about what you said.” He hits the back of his thigh and Gerard squirms, but Frank has his other arm pinning him down into place.

Gerard starts counting in his head despite what Frank asked him to do, but he’s falling into this place in his mind where he follows Frank’s directions. Because he knows, the part of him that’s left after all his defenses have broken down knows, that Frank would never ask him to do anything that would hurt him. Not the bad kind of hurt. And so Gerard chants  _ I deserve to be happy _ after each smack and it’s so fucking painful. Hurts deeper in his heart, so much so that the wood hitting his stinging flesh is just a dull tap. 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: There's no actual suicide attempt taken place in this chapter, but it could be perceived that way so I want to give a heads up just in case.

Gerard’s a little unsure of this rope bondage meeting when he sees how many people are sitting around the living room waiting for the instructor to begin. Frank’s talking to some guy about his tattoos, but he keeps a hand on Gerard’s knee like they had agreed beforehand. 

“I just think that it would be more helpful than trying to look up YouTube videos,” Frank said, shoveling more Fruity Pebbles into his mouth, “And you’ll be able to ask questions this way.”

Gerard poked at his own bowl of cereal. “Yeah.”

“We don’t have to go if it makes you uncomfortable,” Frank said, slurping at the pink milk leftover in his bowl. And then when Gerard didn’t say anything else, he set his bowl down and put a hand over Gerard’s. “Hey,” he said softly and waited for Gerard to look up at him, “You’re not going to be in a scene while we’re there. It’s just to learn. It won’t be like last time.”

Gerard knew it wasn’t not the same as the parties, but he couldn’t quiet the voice in his head that was screaming at him that it’s NOT SAFE. Frank squeezed Gerard’s hand and the voice quieted a little, so Gerard gripped his hand tighter. It’s not that he didn’t want to do this for Frank. He wants to learn, and he likes the idea of being able to sit and practice on Frank while there’s an instructor present to help if things go wrong. They really can’t afford another Urgent Care bill right now. 

Gerard looked down at their hands and said, “I don’t want to be the one tied up and I need you to keep touching me while we’re there.”

Frank smiled and brought their tangled hands up to his lips. “You’re getting better at this negotiating thing.”

He blushed. 

When the instructor started laying out rope on the living room floor, Gerard focused on the colors and patterns of the rope. Started to think about which color he’d like to see on Frank, how he preferred solid color ones instead of the pattern that would clash with Frank’s tattoos.

He feels Frank squeeze his knees so he looks up and bites his lip at the knowing smile Frank is flashing him, like he knows that Gerard just drifted off to La La Land and missed the instructor’s introduction. He starts to pay attention though when the instructor--who he catches is Vicky--shows how to do a simple single column tie, which Gerard’s already learned on his own, but it’s nice to see it done on someone else. She talks about how single column ties are important to master since the body is made of columns and that just makes Gerard start to drift back to art school. 

Because, fuck, he’s missed drawing a lot lately. It’s been this itch under his fingertips, like his hands know that they’re missing out on something even if Gerard’s mind is still too bogged down to carry anything out. He hasn’t even really tried to start on anything, especially not since the meeting about his show. He knows, well sorta knows, that it wasn’t his artistic capabilities that lost him the show. Brian had said they already had a show too similar, but it doesn’t really convince the sticky self-loathing voice in his head, sounding too much like his own, that keeps spewing how Gerard’s never going to make it as an artist. 

Frank squeezes his knee again and Gerard comes back to him, taking a deep breath and holding it before releasing slowly. Frank meets his eyes and quirks up an eyebrow, but Gerard shakes his head slightly and tries to give him a smile. 

Things had been a little...tense since the night in the kitchen. 

“Ok, ok, we’re done,” Frank had said and Gerard heard the clatter of the wooden spoon hit the floor. 

He had whined when Frank moved him from his position and then they slid to the floor, both too spent to get up and walk to the bedroom or even the couch. Frank leaned against the fridge and held Gerard in his lap, kissing his forehead. And they just stayed like that for a while, Frank letting Gerard drift slowly and safely back to his body. 

“Thank you,” Gerard had whispered, blushing a little and hiding his face into the curve of Frank’s neck. 

Frank chuckled and hugged him closer. “I know you needed that,” he said, then he shifted a little and Gerard could feel the weight of Gerard’s breakdown pressing in on them. “Are you ok?”

It was a loaded question, and Gerard wasn’t really sure how to answer. Honesty was probably the best move, so he whispered, “I don’t know.”

It felt like they had been making progress only to take ten steps backwards, because they didn’t talk about it again. Gerard knew Frank didn’t want to push him, didn’t want to piss him off or overstep any boundaries that they were still figuring out by making him call that number that was scribbled on a post-it note on his fridge. 

The worst part was that Gerard felt like he was in the middle of the ocean during a storm. Felt like he was being pulled in all different directions and if he didn’t keep up, didn’t swim and try to move with the currents, he would just be pulled underwater. Because he had Mikey, and now Frank, telling him that he needed to see a therapist. But he still didn’t feel ready, didn’t think he needed it. Or, maybe he needs some sort of help but he doesn’t really see the point of it. Not if he was going to fall into a depressive episode with no fucking trigger. Not if everything is going the way it should and he still feels like he can’t face the world. What’s the fucking point?

Gerard brings himself back to the bondage meeting, because he’s not supposed to be thinking that way. If he does, he’s supposed to call Mikey but he really, _really_ , doesn’t want to keep having to call Mikey. 

Vicky’s demonstrating how to tie up someone’s legs together into a mermaid tail and Gerard focuses on that. Watches the rope circle her volunteer’s legs and knot down to her ankles and when Vicky tells everyone that they can give it a go, Gerard pulls at Frank’s legs. 

Frank chuckles and his eyes are bright, so much different from the haunted look he had when Gerard couldn’t get out of bed. And it helps, he didn’t think he could get into the right mindset here with everyone watching, but he starts to zero in on the way the rope feels in his hands. He focuses on wrapping it tight enough around Frank’s legs to make him sigh happily, coiling it around his muscles then knotting it and repeating the process until he’s worked his way down to Frank’s ankles. 

Frank’s laying on his back with his hands on his stomach. Gerard watches them rise and fall slowly, deliberately, with each deep breath. He loves that he can give this to Frank, that he can calm him down like this. 

“It’s like I’m safe, I don’t know,” Frank had muttered when Gerard asked him what he liked about being tied up so much. 

Because he and Frank switched, sure, but Frank mostly ran the show. Except, Frank loved to be tied up and looked how Gerard assumed he looked when he drifted away. Frank’s face would go slack and his lips would twist up in a small smile, like he was in on the biggest secret to life. His eyes would close and his eyelashes would flutter occasionally, like he was trying to fight off falling asleep. 

“It’s like,” Frank tried again when Gerard kept looking at him, “Like I’m running all the time. I have this energy that I can’t ever burn off and it leaves me feeling like I’m going to burst out of my skin. But then you tie me up and everything stops”--he smiles at Gerard and leans in to kiss him-- “I feel like I can turn off for a while and just rest.”

And it made sense when Frank put it that way. Because Gerard could see that nervousness in Frank. He’s noticed how he’s constantly in motion, rocking on his feet or drumming his hands on the counter. But it’s not in the way that someone bored would do it, it’s like he physically can’t stay still. Like if he slowed down whatever was chasing him would catch up and devour him whole. He’s not sure what Frank is trying to outrun, and sometimes he tries to get it out of Frank, but Frank just laughs it off and turns the television up higher. 

Sometimes he thinks it’s because Frank’s got too much wasted potential. He’s this great musician that Gerard’s pretty sure will never make it out of Jersey because that’s just the hand they’ve been dealt. He wishes he could change things for him though, he wishes there was a way to push Frank across stages all over the world. Let him scream out his lyrics and have a fight with his guitar every night so that he expels whatever demons are plaguing him enough so that he can sleep. And really sleep. 

Gerard can’t get that look out of his mind. The one that he gave Gerard when he couldn’t get out of bed. That deep fear and despair all wrapped up in a suffocating envelope of helplessness. Because Frank couldn’t outrun his demons and fight Gerard’s.

But here, on the floor of Vicky’s living room, he’s at rest. He’s breathing deeply and smiling softly as Gerard ties off the end of the rope and squeezes Frank’s feet in his hands. He looks completely blissed out and Gerard thinks that there’s nothing he wouldn’t do to keep Frank that peaceful. 

*

“Hey,” Ray says, coming into Gerard’s cubicle. 

Gerard turns in his broken chair and tries to shrink down as small as possible. Getting back into the swing of work had been weird at first. And it sort of threw Gerard because he had only been gone a day, but the implications were deafening. He knew that the office didn’t know that Gerard had a breakdown at home where he had to have Frank turn him over his knee with a wooden spoon to get him to calm down, but Gerard felt just as vulnerable anyway. 

There hadn’t been any of the heaviness that had held him in bed all day, but it still felt weird walking into the office, sorta like how he remembered it felt to walk out into the parking lot after he had been skating in the roller rink with Mikey all day when they were kids--like his legs were jello and his feet couldn’t meet the surface fully. 

Ray hops up on Gerard’s desk and picks up one of the action figures that Gerard keeps there, it’s one of Mikey’s old He Man figures. “Did you call that number I sent you?”

“Um, so that was my...Frank texted you, we’re sorta, I don’t really know,” Gerard rambles. 

Ray smiles a little. “Well, he sounds like a good guy if he’s looking out for you.”

“I don’t really need a therapist,” Gerard says, shrugging and hoping he looks nonchalant about the whole thing. 

Ray furrows his brows and sets down the action figure. “Well if you do, you should ask for Stacy,” he says, “She’s really nice and she has candy. The good kind, not the old lady butterscotch stuff.”

“I like butterscotch,” Gerard says softly, then, “You see a therapist?”

Ray shrugs. “Sure. It helps. I had some pretty bad anxiety when I moved to the city and was living on my own. Stacy helped me through it. I still go about once a month or so,” he says, and he says it so casually like he’s talking about the weather or something. Ray’s watching Gerard process this and he sets a hand on Gerard’s shoulder. “It’s not anything to be ashamed about.”

Gerard shrinks further and he just really wants to disappear. 

“I didn’t want to go either at first,” Ray tells him, “I sorta thought only really fucked up people went. And I felt stupid talking about it, like everyone would judge me. But I was talking to my brother about it one night because I just got so sick of keeping it to myself. And after I told him everything, he just looked at me and told me I was brave for going.”

Gerard smiles a little despite himself. “Brothers are pretty great.”

Ray squeezes his shoulder softly before letting him go. “They are,” he agrees, then hops down from the desk. “I have a conference call, but I’ll see you at lunch.”

It’s not until he’s sitting in the tub with all his clothes on that he thinks maybe everyone is right and Gerard’s broken little brain won’t let him see that this could all be fixed by calling that damn number. It’s the stigma maybe. And it’s the feeling that he’s really hit rock bottom if he has to crawl to a therapist. But it’s also the feeling that Gerard’s officially out of fight now. And that’s sort of a scary place to be in his head. 

So he calls Mikey, because he had promised. After the last time, he had promised. 

“Mikes,” Gerard croaks wetly, and he almost drops the phone in the tub because his hand is shaking so much. 

“Yeah? Ok, I’m on my way,” Mikey says gently. 

Gerard lets the phone clatter onto the bathroom floor then sinks down under the water. It’s almost safe down here, he thinks. He likes that he can’t hear the television in the other room, that his body feels like it’s wrapped in this nice warm cocoon. And he loves the strain holding his breath puts on his lungs. Loves the dull ache that intensifies into a pull, squeezing and squeezing in a way that both grounds him and sends him flying sky high. But his body protests and he scrambles up to the surface, hearing the water hit the floor and his gasps echoing off the walls. He needs someone to hold him down, he thinks. 

He looks around the tub and tries to find something heavy to set on him, but he doesn’t have anything in the bathroom that would work. He gets out of the tub, trailing water behind him as he walks through the apartment and he vaguely is aware that this is a stupid idea. That he’s probably crazy right now, but it doesn’t stop his feet from carrying him into different areas of the apartment until he’s pushing soda cans, paper weights, and anything that’s got a good weight into his jeans and hoodie pockets. He grabs a couple of heavy art books left over from school that he never looks at anymore then walks back into the bathroom. 

The weight in his clothes pulls him against the porcelain and it makes Gerard’s blood sing. This is perfect, he thinks as he sets the books on his chest--and then he’s submerged again. The quietness of being underwater wraps around him again and the thick, warmness keeps him safe. Down here he can’t feel the bleakness of the city, can’t see the tiredness in Frank’s eyes or the awkward smile that Ray was trying to force. He doesn’t see Brian shooting him concerned looks as he passes his cubicle, doesn’t hear the beeps of his answer machine holding too many unlistened messages from his mom, and he can’t feel Mikey’s disappointment. 

He’s safe. 

And then the pull creeps back in. That almost burning sensation at his lungs, his muscles tensing and Gerard wills his body to behave just a bit longer. To let this pull him out of his head. From all the thoughts that are telling him that he’s not good enough for Frank, that he’s not going to make it as an artist, how he’s barely functioning as an adult. How pathetic it is that he has to lean on his little brother for every little thing. That he hasn’t been there for Mikey when he needed him. Mikey, who had just started at a job that has him working late nights and traveling around the world. Mikey who has his heart torn in two between two boys and is trying to fill that void in stranger’s beds. Mikey who is going through the beginnings of his adult life alone because Gerard just can’t seem to pull it together. 

And that’s how Mikey finds him.

He sees the warped figure of Mikey standing over him in the tub, hears his muffled yell, then his long fingers wrapping in Gerard’s hoodie and pulling him to the surface. “What the _fuck_?” Mikey demands, pulling the books out of the tub and letting them slosh onto the floor. 

He pulls him over to the lip of the tub and presses his forehead against Gerard’s, breathing almost as erratically as he is. He runs his hands over Gerard’s face, smooths them down his spine and then back up to his face to pull him away and search his eyes. “What’s...did you take anything?” He asks, no doubt trying to gauge his pupil size. “Have you been drinking?” 

Gerard’s trying to form the words. Trying to pull them out of his oxygen depleted haze, search among the voice screaming at him to let Mikey go--that he’s only hurting him more and Mikey would be better off if he was gone. He climbs through the weeds of his mind that are hiding past enjoyments like drawing and staying up late to watch horror movies. Digs through neglected friendships and the brittle beginnings of new ones. Sorts through the scattered feelings towards Frank, the love and pain and how they could coexist in such a mutilated beautiful way, in a way that only Gerard would find special. 

“I think,” Gerard gasps, then coughs, voice hoarse and waterlogged, “I think maybe I need help.”


	11. Chapter 11

“So what brings you in?'

Gerard frowns. Wasn’t he supposed to already know why Gerard was here? That’s why he had to sit in the waiting room with Mikey and fill out a mountain of paperwork, right? Mikey had to fill out their family’s medical history since Gerard didn’t really know, didn’t even know what his insurance information was. Mikey had pressed his lips into a thin line and handed Gerard back the paperwork when he got to the questionnaires, trying to not look too obviously over Gerard’s shoulder as he answered “Have you been having suicidal thoughts?” or “How much alcohol do you consume a week?”

“Um,” Gerard starts, “I don’t feel too good?”

The guy that sits across from him doesn’t look much older than him and Gerard isn’t sure why that bothers him, but it does. Surely this man doesn’t have it together already. He had expected an old man, someone with lots of years of knowledge. Someone who’s been through it all and is ready to share his secrets with Gerard. But no, this kid looks like he’s barely gotten out of school. 

“What doesn’t feel good?”

“Are you going to just ask me questions the whole time?” Gerard asks, and he’s a little surprised by the flash of annoyance coursing through him, but seriously...what the fuck? He thought this was supposed to help him, but he just feels more worked up if anything. 

The guy--Dr. Lazzara, he remembers now--grins a bit and tilts back in his chair, throwing his boots up on the small table that separates the two of them. “I’m just trying to gauge where you’re at,” he says. 

“I filled out all those papers,” Gerard points out. 

Dr. Lazzara shrugs. “That’s just a formality. And they don’t tell me what’s going on in here”--he taps on his temple-- “So why don’t you tell me why you’re here.”

The thing is that he’s not really sure how to answer that question. The automatic response is to tell him that Mikey had dialed the number as soon as he got Gerard to change into some dry clothes. Gerard had kept his eyes on the floor as he heard Mikey talk with the receptionist to get to their provider representative or whatever. And he started crying when he heard Mikey talk about him like he wasn’t even there. He knew it wasn’t out of malice, Mikey was probably trying to distance himself as far as possible so he could finish the phone call. Because Gerard could hear the tremble in his voice when he said, “My brother tried to kill himself.”

He hadn’t had the energy to correct him. And maybe that was more telling than him trying to protest and say that’s not what he had been doing at all. Because maybe that wasn’t his intention, maybe he really had just wanted to find that safety, but he didn’t stop when he got out of the tub to get something to weigh himself down. He had known, even if only slightly, that he was pushing it. And he didn’t care.

Then there was also the fact that he had called Mikey. There were very few things that Gerard had any faith left in. He wasn’t a religious person. He didn’t believe in fate or that the stars had anything to do with his personality. He didn’t read fortune cookie papers, and he didn’t give a fuck about telling anyone what he wished for when he blew out his birthday candles. But he always believed in Mikey. Always believed that the tie between the two of them meant something. So if he called Mikey for help, there was a reason for that. 

“My brother thinks I tried to kill myself,” Gerard says. 

Dr. Lazzara nods and clasps his hands in his lap. Gerard thinks it’s sorta weird that he’s not writing anything down. He always sees therapists writing things in notebooks on television. 

“Did you?”

“Not really,” Gerard says and then he takes a deep breath because this was the part he really didn’t want to talk about. “I, um, do this thing...or I mean, my boyfriend and I are into bdsm.”

Dr. Lazzara nods. “Yeah, ok. So what happened?”

“I just,” Gerard starts and he crosses his legs and brings them up on the couch with him, hugging them close. “I like things to hurt.”

He nods again and Gerard thinks that of course now he wants to be quiet and not ask questions. He pokes at his shoe, picking at the hole that’s forming on the side of his converses. “So I was in the tub and I liked the way it hurt to hold my breath for so long.”

“And you didn’t stop chasing that feeling?” He guesses. 

Gerard nods. 

“You don’t seem so sure,” Dr. Lazzara observes.

“I didn’t plan on it,” Gerard says. 

“But you didn’t really stop either,” he says, then he pauses for that to sink in before saying, “So why don’t we talk about what got you to that tub?”

Gerard is exhausted by the time he walks back out to the waiting room. Mikey looks just as wound up as he did when he brought Gerard in. He looks up with a hopeful expression, as if an one hour conversation would fix his brother. But Gerard almost feels more broken. 

“I, um,” then Gerard clears his throat because it feels so tight from talking for so long, “I need to go to the pharmacy.”

Mikey nods and stands up. “Yeah, sure. The one by your place?”

“Yeah,” he says quietly then walks past him to get outside so he can light a cigarette. 

Mikey comes to stand next to him and lights one too. “So, how’d it go? Do you like him?”

“I guess,” Gerard says, “He wasn’t judgy or anything.”

Mikey’s lips quirk around the cigarette. “I don’t think they’re allowed to be judgy.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t really stop people. My doctor still gives me the stink eye when I tell her I smoke.”

“Because smoking is bad for you,” he says, blowing smoke in Gerard’s face and smiling. 

Gerard smiles back and throws an arm around his shoulders. Mikey crumbles, bends his head down to rest on Gerard’s shoulder and he clings to him. Like this, Gerard almost feels like the older brother taking care of his baby brother. But the difference is that he caused this, he’s the reason Mikey is hurting. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs against Mikey’s greasy hair. 

“You better be,” Mikey mumbles, “I think you shaved ten years off my life.”

Gerard snorts. “Pretty sure that’s the cigarettes.”

“Well you got me addicted to those too,” Mikey jokes. 

Gerard hugs him tighter. “It’s going to be ok.”

“You don’t have a choice.”

Mikey takes him to the pharmacy and adds a bunch of magazines and candy onto the checkout counter claiming that it was “his fee for driving your sorry ass to the doctor’s” and Gerard just smiles, a real smile because he loves that Mikey wasn’t making this weird. 

“Frank’s coming over later,” Mikey tells him, looking at his phone as they walk into Gerard's apartment. Gerard’s is still sitting in a bowl of rice, though he’s pretty sure it’s not going to do a damn thing. 

“Oh, ok,” Gerard says, setting his orange pill bottle down by the kitchen sink. “Did you tell him anything?”

“He called me after he couldn’t get a hold of you yesterday,” Mikey explains, “I told him that you dropped your phone in the tub and that you were spending the night at my place.”

Gerard nods. “Ok, so I…”

Mikey hops up on the kitchen counter. “I think you should tell him what happened. Hiding that isn’t--”

“Mikey, I wasn’t trying to kill myself,” Gerard tells him, leaning back against the fridge. 

He watches Mikey reach over to grab their shopping bag from the pharmacy and sort through it until he pulls out a pack of sour straws. He takes one then offers the bag to Gerard and waits until Gerard takes one before saying, “I don’t think it changes the fact that you could have died.”

“I’m just saying I wasn’t--”

“You still put yourself in danger, Gee,” Mikey says, “You--I don’t know what the fuck you were trying to accomplish if it wasn’t...but, either way…”

“It’s fucked,” Gerard offers and Mikey nods, taking a bite of his candy. 

Gerard just rolls the sticky sugary straw in between his fingers and he’s aware of Mikey’s eyes on him. “Frank should know where your head is at right now.”

*

“Ow! Fucker!” Frank shouts, his body arching up and Gerard thinks that’s kinda funny. “Are you laughing at me?”

Gerard tilts the bowl of wax back up and quirks an eyebrow. “Do you want me to stop?”

“No, I didn’t safeword,” Frank reminds him, his breath coming out in short spurts as he watches the wax harden on his chest. 

Gerard’s got Frank handcuffed to his bed with a shower curtain underneath him so that they don’t ruin his mattress. “More?”

“Yeah,” Frank breathes, closing his eyes, then licks his lips and nods, “Yes, please.”

Gerard smiles and tilts the bowl forward and watches the small stream of wax pour down to Frank’s stomach, which he tightens and Gerard bites his lip at the definition of abs that pokes through his skin. He’s never really been into muscular guys, it wasn’t his thing. But he likes that Frank has more lines that come out when he’s strained. Likes the curve of them, how they tremble under the wax and then hide again once it cools. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Frank breathes and he moans a little, twisting in his restraints. 

Gerard strokes the back of his hand down his cheek. “Color?”

Frank opens his eyes and looks at him with a glittery smile. “Green. So green. We’ve got to do this the other way, you’d love it.”

Gerard blushes and leans in to kiss him before sitting back up to tilt more wax onto him. He watches Frank’s face, how it gets all twisted into a pained expression as the hot wax trickles down his skin. And then Frank’s face goes slack, like he’s just come, and his mouth opens a little with a wondrous gasp. Gerard doesn’t ask him to explain how it feels even though he’s so curious, he wants Frank to drift in this headspace for as long as he wants. 

Because he’s been so tense lately. Gerard’s watched him come into his apartment and curl up on his couch, pressing his face into the cushions and screaming loudly. Some nights Gerard can get him to talk about it, he had a bad day at work or everyone in his band is fighting again, but other times it’s something that can’t be put into words and Gerard understands that. 

And sometimes the tension is because of Gerard. 

“I don’t…” Frank trailed off when Gerard had told Frank what happened the night before. Mikey was hovering in the kitchen, staying because Gerard had asked. Frank turned on the couch and looked at Mikey, like he needed him to translate what Gerard had just told him. 

“He had a therapy appointment today,” Mikey told him, like it could soothe the blow of Gerard almost dying. Because he’s starting to get that. After Mikey and Dr. Lazzara talked him through what he did, he gets that he could have died. And he sorta sees the heaviness of it, he’s still trying to work through how he feels about that. 

“Oh,” Frank breathed, “Well that’s...good?” He looked back at Gerard. 

Gerard nodded, because he really needed everything to be good now. 

The bowl Gerard’s filled with wax is running low and he sorta wants to melt more wax, but he also doesn’t want to push Frank that far. Plus, he looks pretty blissed out enough as it is. Gerard smiles fondly and runs his fingers through Frank’s hair. 

He lets him just float for a bit. He knows how great he’s probably feeling right now and he really doesn’t want to take that from him, but he also knows that he should probably clean Frank up before he falls asleep. “Frankie,” he murmurs, scratching softly at Frank’s scalp, “I need you to help me get you to the bathroom.”

Gerard releases his wrists from the handcuffs wrapped around Frank’s headboard. He pulls Frank’s wrists into his lap and rubs at the pink rings around his skin from him pulling against them. Frank hums happily and Gerard takes his time rubbing down his arms to get the feeling back in them before shaking Frank’s shoulder a bit. “Come on, Frank.”

Getting Frank to stand up is a bit funny. He sways and falls back onto the bed with a giggle. Gerard wraps his arm around his waist and lets Frank lean his weight against him as they take their time getting to the bathroom. Gerard climbs into the tub with Frank and turns the water on, keeping it pretty lukewarm at first to get Frank used to the temperature. He pulls the shower head down and runs the water over Frank’s chest. 

“Good,” Frank murmurs, “Feels good.”

“Yeah?” Gerard asks softly, “It’s because you got this fancy shower head. I should get one of these.”

“I shoot it up my butt sometimes,” Frank giggles. 

Gerard chuckles and turns the temperature up a bit so he can start melting the wax off Frank. “I bet you do,” he says fondly, pushing at the mushy wax and revealing pink strips on Frank’s skin. He’s so beautiful like this, Gerard thinks, and not that Frank isn’t always beautiful, but this is different. This is the kind of beauty that Gerard likes most. Not the kind where someone is all made up and in their best clothes, but completely unhinged. Just laying slack in the tub with melted wax clumping off. Frank’s eyelashes are clumped together from the water, making them into these thick points. His cheeks are flushed from the bliss and the heat of the water. His lips are red from biting them and they’re parted with his tongue coming out to lick off the water every so often. And there’s no tension in his face, nothing wrinkling his forehead, no downturn of his mouth, no clenched jaw. Just smooth and relaxed skin draped over his gentle bone structure. 

Gerard leans in to kiss him. Frank smiles into the kiss and hums contently. 

“Love you,” Gerard breathes before he thinks anything of it, and he doesn’t freeze up at the words like he thought he might. Because it’s not heavy. It’s not a grey feeling holding him down to the bed, and it’s not ropes holding him down to his body either. It’s just there. Just existing and breathing.

“Gee,” Frank’s voice cracks, and then he’s kissing him. Not like in a movie, not passionate and swoon worthy. It’s just the slide of their lips, and Gerard tastes the water in his mouth, feels Frank’s chapped lips flaking against his and feels the bite of his teeth on his bottom lip. It’s perfect. This feeling, this _here_ and _now_ and not then or when. “Love you, baby,” Frank says hurriedly and pulls at his hair, “So you can’t leave, ok? You don’t get to go anywhere.”

Gerard closes his eyes, feels the words wash over him in waves and waits for the pressure to push him back down. But it never does. Because he remembers, in the same way that he just believes in the magic that is him and Mikey, that Frank would never ask him to do anything that would hurt him. 

He holds the shower head up and sprays Frank in the face, laughing a little at his wide expression. “Where am I going to go, asshole?’

Frank grins back at him, like he’s in on whatever joke Gerard is still trying to figure out. 

*

“I think that sometimes I just feel really small,” Gerard says softly.

Dr. Lazzara reaches over to pull a card from the deck and frowns at it. “Like when?”

Gerard sets down a seven of clubs and says, “I don’t know. Like when I think about how fake all our food is. How I’m just eating preservatives and chemicals that will probably give me cancer later, and then they’ll just hook me up to a machine that makes me throw up and lose my hair and no one will think anything really of it, because there’s someone waiting their turn to get hooked up. I feel like I’m just on a conveyor belt.”

Dr. Lazzara--wait, no Adam--says, “You don’t think anyone would care if you got cancer?”

“That’s not really the point,” Gerard sighs, setting down an eight. 

“‘What’s the point?’” Adam asks, “That’s what you’re trying to say, right? What’s the point of getting out of bed to make money to eat these chemicals?”

“Yeah, exactly,” Gerard says, watching Adam pick up a card from the deck and wince. “You’re kinda shit at crazy eights.”

“It’s the only card game I know. My grandma never wanted to play anything else,” he chuckles, then, “Don’t you think Mikey would care if you got cancer?”

“You’re really hung up on this cancer thing,” Gerard says. 

“Just playing with your metaphor,” Adam smiles.

“Sure, Mikey would care,” Gerard tells him and he winces at how horrible that would be for Mikey. He can’t imagine if Mikey got sick, and Gerard pinches his thigh to push it out of his head. Adam watches, but doesn’t say anything about it though Gerard’s sure it’ll come up at some point. 

“Mikey caring isn’t enough?” Adam asks and when Gerard winces, “Well?”

“Of course Mikey is enough,” he insists, forgetting the card game. 

“And Frank?” Adam presses, “What about Ray or your mom? Even Brian?”

Gerard feels his face pinch together as Adam rambles off more names. 

“Doesn’t seem quite so small when you start adding, does it?” Adam asks, looking up at Gerard from his hand of cards. 

Gerard hates it when Adam makes a statement like that, sorta like he’s going ‘ah, ha!’, but Gerard doesn’t really feel like he’s making fun of him or anything. He’s just making him think, and Gerard’s not quite sure how he feels about that. 

Gerard sets down a four of diamonds and sighs, “I don’t want to lean on Mikey so much though.”

“What would you want to do differently?” Adam asks, picking up an eight and throwing it down on the table,“Oh, fuck yeah!”

Gerard laughs, then, “I call him too much I think. We have this rule though, where we have to text each other every three days even if it’s just a blank text.”

“Sounds like a good system,” Adam nods.

Gerard frowns and picks a card off the deck, but it's nothing he needs. “The rule is there because of me. Because I used to do stupid shit when I drank and sometimes I would wonder off and get lost.”

“He worries about you,” Adam says, “And you don’t like that.”

“I just think he worries too much,” Gerard explains, “That he should be working on his own life and not mine. But it’s not even that he’s meddling, I _go_ to him with my shit. I call him in the middle of the night to bitch about Frank or when I can’t get out of bed.”

“Is it the nature of the calls or the quantity that bothers you?” Adam asks, “Because from what I’ve gathered about Mikey, he wants to know about your life.”

“He shouldn’t be putting his life on hold in case I need him,” Gerard sighs. 

“Is that what he’s doing?”

“Yeah. He’s got this thing with these guys,” Gerard starts, and he grins a little, “These two boys are fucking in love with him, but I mean--how could they not? It’s Mikey”--Adam smiles-- “But he’s just not...he’s not giving himself the space to explore that because he’s waiting for me to call him.”

Adam sighs and sets his hand of cards down and leans back in his chair. 

“And he’s got this amazing job and I know he loves it, but he’s so fucking tired all the time. He’s flying to and from London, and I know he’s scared too. I see it on his face that he feels small too but I don’t know how to help him because I’m...I’m, fuck,” Gerard breathes, rubbing viciously at his eyes. 

He’s glad that Adam doesn’t offer him a tissue or tell him that it’s alright. He just sits there and let’s Gerard cry it out, and it’s nice. Cathartic even, in the slow quiet type. Not like he’s being torn apart like when he’s in a scene with Frank, but he’s just shifting around. Like his mind is rearranging into a shape that works better, and that hurts. But it’s slow, it’s graduale and all Adam is asking for is that Gerard breathe through it. 

“You’re here aren’t you?” Adam asks softly, “And you’re taking your meds. So just take a deep breath, Kid. You’re doing what you’re supposed to.”

Gerard laughs, watery and snotty. “I’m older than you.”

Adam grins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm horrible about remembering to add my [tumblr](https://throwupsparkles.tumblr.com/), but know that I'm there to talk to if you want to rant about fanfiction or whatever is on your mind.


	12. Chapter 12

Gerard thinks that sex is one of those few things that he loved even when he was sad or whatever. “Depressed,” Adam had kept scolding him, “You have depression and you need to treat it like any other medical condition.” So he’s being a good little patient. He’s spending his Thursday evenings in Adam’s office and he’s taking his medicine every morning. Which is all fine and well, except when it’s not. Because it’s ruining his sex life.

Frank’s pulling out all the fucking tricks tonight and normally Gerard would be  _ very _ appreciative, but he’s getting more and more frustrated as he keeps looking down and finding himself embarrassingly soft. 

“It’s ok,” Frank murmurs, unhooking Gerard’s legs from his shoulders. He lays them gently on the bed and strokes his hips. “Gee, look at me.”

Gerard just stares at the ceiling and tries not to spiral into a swirl of self-hate. Because he’s pathetic. He feels fucking pathetic, laying here naked and soft and fucking  _ crying _ about it. 

Frank sighs and straddles Gerard’s hips, cupping his cheeks and kissing him. “Love you,” he murmurs, kissing him over and over, “Love you so much, you have no idea.”

And Gerard doesn’t. He doesn’t understand what’s happening because how could Frank love someone like him? Who can’t get through life without these stupid pills. These erection killing pills. “I hate Adam,” Gerard mumbles. 

Frank chuckles. “No you don’t,” he says, kissing the tip of his nose, “It’s fine, I promise. We’ll figure things out.”

“We’re just never going to have sex again?” Gerard demands, raising his eyebrow at Frank’s wilting cock. 

“You’re so dramatic,” Frank teases, kissing him once more before getting out of bed. He slips on his boxers and Gerard sighs sadly. Frank turns back to him and smirks. “We could do  _ other _ bliss inducing fun things.”

Gerard tries hard to still look sulky, but his interest is piqued. “What did you have in mind?”

Frank smiles knowingly and leans against the wall, crossing his arms and tilting his head back. “You tell me,” he says.

Gerard gets what Frank is trying to do. He wants Gerard to take control right now since he feels like he has no control over his body. And it makes sense, Gerard does feel like he’s just along for the ride and it really fucking sucks. But he wants things to be normal too. He wants Frank to treat him like there’s nothing wrong, so he shakes his head. 

“Give me some perimeters,” Frank says lowly and it goes straight to the bottom of Gerard’s spine, white hot and  _ fuck _ he hates his dick, hates how stupid it’s being because they could be having a very nice time right now. 

“I want to be told what to do,” Gerard says, too driven by the promise of going under to feel embarrassed about sounding needy, “I want to do something different. I want you to push me.”

Frank raises an eyebrow and Gerard grips the sheets, not wanting to have to explain himself or give any specifics. 

“Safeword?” Frank asks.

Gerard rolls his eyes. “Yellow.”

Frank narrows his eyes. “That’s to pause. What’s your safeword to stop if things get scary?”

“Red,” Gerard says like a grumpy child.

Frank points to the floor next to him. “Come here.”

Gerard shivers and gets up, but when he starts to walk over Frank shakes his head. So, Gerard lowers to his hands and knees and crawls over and this is exactly what he wanted. This is what he needs. He already feels the world shrinking down to his bedroom, where the only thing to focus on is Frank and what he wants Gerard to do. 

When he gets to the space next to Frank he sits back so that his ass is resting on his ankles. He keeps his head bowed down to the floor, stares softly at the redness of his knees from rubbing against the carpet. 

Frank rests his hand on top of Gerard’s head. “Good,” he murmurs, and Gerard waits for the next order. But Frank doesn’t give it, just stands there and pets Gerard’s hair. 

Gerard sighs frustrated and Frank chuckles, tugging on his hair a little. “Don’t get an attitude,” he warns, and Gerard hears the threat in his words. Not a punishment, at least not a scene, but Frank would stop if he thought Gerard wasn’t obeying--that’s about the only punishment that Frank’s comfortable with. And it’s enough to make Gerard take a deep breath and settle into himself. 

“Good,” Frank breathes again and removes his hand. He watches Frank walk to his closet and hears him sort through his box of supplies. Gerard has a flash of an idea that they should move in together so they didn’t have their stuff scattered between two apartments, but he pushes that out quickly before he has the chance to get worked up. 

Frank comes back to him and he jumps when he feels a band of fabric covering his eyes. “Easy,” Frank says softly, “You asked to be pushed.”

He did. But he meant that he wanted Frank to hit him with a new flogger or something like that. Not actually push his limits. “You can safeword whenever you want,” Frank reminds him and Gerard rolls his eyes under the blindfold. That’s what this is. He’s testing him again, like he used to do when they first started and he was trying to find Gerard’s boundaries. But this is different. This is testing his trust that Gerard will safeword. 

Gerard settles back into his position and smirks a little definitely. He hears Frank chuckle a little, then he’s running his hands down Gerard’s arms slowly and deliberately so Gerard can tell where he’s going to go. Frank’s hands come down to Gerard’s ankles and he shifts Gerard so that his legs are spread wider, then he’s circling his ankles in rope. Gerard’s trying to figure out what he’s doing, there’s not really anything for him to tie his ankles to on this side of the room, but then he smiles when he feels Frank moving his wrists to rest on top of Gerard’s ankles, bounding the two together. 

“Color?”

“Green.”

He can hear the smirk in Frank’s voice and he hears him move away. He listens to him moving things on the floor next to him, then he gasps and jerks in his restraints when he feels the pin pricks of the pinwheel running across his stomach. He laughs a little, breathy and wondrous at how his body bows to the small focused points of pain. Sharp and then stinging when Frank moves the pin to other parts of his body. 

Gerard throws his head back and lets out a long exhale. 

“That’s it,” Frank agrees softly. 

He follows the path that the pinwheel takes, slow and traveling over the planes of his chest, across his nipples, up his shoulders, then down his arms. He’s getting there, but it’s not enough. At least not yet. If anything Gerard’s feeling his stomach turn and coil, feels the want tighten at the base of his belly without any promises of release. 

He cries out when he feels pressing, sharp pain on his nipples and when it doesn’t let up he realizes that Frank’s put clamps on them. He whines low and tugs against his restraint out of instinct. 

“Easy,” Frank scolds quietly, “Breathe through it.”

Gerard’s shoulders are aching from holding his position and his skin feels like it’s throbbing from the pinwheel that Frank’s forgotten. His nipples are pulsing and it goes straight to Gerard’s cock and he wants so bad, he fucking wants Frank to just throw him down on the bed and fuck him even if he doesn’t come. He just needs, needs

And then he yells when he feels the blow to the top of his thigh. Frank lets the strands of the flogger brush against the stinging skin before he hears him pick it back up then whip it back down. Gerard’s body tries to move with the hits, either arch into it or recoil away, but it doesn’t matter because he can’t move. He can’t do anything but take it. 

But it’s still not enough. Because he just feels it coiling tighter and tighter in him and he knows it’s not going to snap apart. He’s just going to continue to wind up unless Frank sends him under but Gerard thinks he’s too worked up for that. His body is too strung tight and for a panicked moment Gerard sees red in his head, sees it flashing and the same warning bells that rang at the party. 

“S’not the same,” he breathes, trying to calm himself. To find that quiet place in his head that Frank always sends him to. 

The blows to his thighs stop and Frank’s hand strokes his face. “What’s not the same?”

Gerard needs him to keep hitting him, needs to feel the pain wash over him and then take him down underwater so he can’t hear or feel anything anymore. Where nothing bad is going to touch him and he can’t do that if he’s scared. He can’t if he tells Frank that he needs to stop.

“Not enough,” He says, moving in his restraints again. 

Frank wraps his hands around Gerard’s wrists. “Take a deep breath, babe.”

“Frank,” Gerard whines, and it’s so  _ frustrating _ because he’s right on the brink but everything Frank is doing is making him see red. Is making him feel small and he can’t breathe. Can’t think. Can’t put this into words for Frank and he just wants to scream. And he wants to be fucked. And he just wants to be fucking normal and have normal sex with his boyfriend.

“Gerard, hey, shh,” Frank murmurs, bringing his hands up to stroke his cheeks. “Are we at yellow or red?”

Gerard shakes his head. 

“No, I need you to tell me or I’m stopping,” Frank warns. 

“No,” Gerard says brokenly, watery and he’s so sick of crying. “It’s green, I’m so green, Frank, I need  _ more _ . I need my head to shut off. I need--”

Frank kisses him slowly, and it helps calm Gerard’s rapid thoughts. Frank pulls back and rubs his thumb along Gerard’s bottom lip. “Everything is ok,” Frank says softly, “You’re ok. I’m right here.” Gerard moves to suck Frank’s thumb and Frank kisses his forehead. “Yeah? Here, let’s try something.”

And then Frank is gone and the panic sets back in. “Frank.”

“Right here, babe,” Frank says from the other side of the room and Gerard exhales when he hears Frank in the closet again. Then he hears him shut the closet door and soon he’s touching Gerard’s cheek again. “We’re going to try this and see what you think, ok? You marked it yellow so I’m not sure how this will go.”

Gerard swallows and nods. “Ok.”

“Open your mouth,” Frank orders gently. 

When Gerard does, he feels something round and silicone fit into his mouth, pushing his teeth apart and straining his jaw. 

“It’s a ballgag,” Frank tells him, “But I’m not going to buckle it behind your head. If you need to safeword, you can spit it out and say it.”

Gerard feels this pull in his body. How all the pressure that’s been building up moves up to his mouth and clamps down on the ball, and it feels good. Feels good to be able to release some of that tension. To feel this ache in his jaw, feel him being spread open like this. It’s so good. 

“Better?”

Gerard nods and Frank practically purrs, nuzzling against his jaw. “You look gorgeous like this,” he whispers and Gerard shivers at the praise. He can imagine how he looks right now. Bound, blindfolded, and gagged. Totally at Frank’s mercy. And he loves it. 

“Ready to start again?” Frank asks, stroking Gerard’s thighs where the sting has dulled from their break. 

Gerard nods again and when the first blow hits he yells loudly, then laughs at how it’s muffled. It’s like the yell is trapped in his head, bouncing off the walls of his mind and drowning out the panic that had tried to set in earlier. He yells out after each blow, letting it wash over him, letting the pain become a blanket and he feels himself sink down, low and far away from the bedroom. Until he can just only make out the crack of the flogger against his thighs, dull and echoing in his ears. Until each blow melts into each other and it’s just a continuous sensation. Until he doesn’t even know if he’s yelling anymore, just knows that his body is reacting in the way that it needs without his mind having to tell it to. 

“Still with me, baby?” 

“Mmm?”

Frank giggles, but it sounds so far away. He feels Frank tip him forward so he’s leaning against Frank’s chest. “Yeah, much better,” he murmurs against his hair before his hands travel down Gerard’s spine and meet at his bound wrists and ankles, taking his time to remove the rope then rub at them gently. He moves back, shifting Gerard so that he tilts forward slowly until he’s laying his head down in Frank’s lap. 

Frank strokes the back of his neck and his hair for a little bit and it’s so nice. Gerard has an inkling of a wish that this could be how life was all the time, but his mind is too fuzzy to hang onto it for long. He feels pressure at his mouth and realizes that Frank is trying to pull the gag out of his mouth. 

Gerard whines and turns his head, but Frank hangs onto the ball and Gerard laughs a little because it reminds him of a dog. And fuck, that sorta sounds nice. Then he laughs for real, hearing his giggle bouncing around them and Frank joins in. “You’re high as a kite, babycakes,” Frank teases, rubbing at Gerard’s aching jaw. “Spit it out.”

He wants to be defiant, wants  _ more _ , but he’s far enough under to latch onto the order and follow it. 

“Good,” Frank says softly, then “let’s go to bed.”

Gerard feels himself frown. “I can…” he tries to say, the words tumbling into mush in his head and his mouth feeling dry from being held open. He moves his hands and it feels like they’re moving through molasses as he reaches for Frank. He paws at him, runs his hands down until he feels him hard against thin cotton. “I can,” he tries again, but words are lost to him right now. 

“I know you can,” Frank tells him, gently moving his hands away, “But that’s not what that was about.”

Gerard tries feebly to pull out of Frank’s hold, but it’s no use and he loses the fight pretty quickly. “Want you to feel good,” Gerard breathes. 

“You do make me feel good,” Frank promises, helping him stand and make it to the bed still blindfolded and walking on jelly legs. Frank lays Gerard down on his back and he listens to the drawer open and shut, feels coolness being wiped on his burning thighs. And then he feels Frank’s soft kisses brushing over his stomach and he says, “Deep breath.”

Gerard does, then cries out when he feels Frank pull the clamps off his nipples at the same time. “I know,” Frank murmurs, wrapping his lips around one and soothing over it with his tongue before moving to the other. “You did so good, Gee,” he tells him, “So brave and trusting.”

Gerard feels his dopey smile on his face and he reaches blindly for Frank. Frank wraps his hand around Gerard’s outstretched fingers. “Right here,” Frank promises, “I’m never going anywhere.”

*

Gerard jumps when he hears a loud thud right by his face. 

He opens his eyes and sees Brain standing next to him and a large binder sitting on his desk. “Way, nice of you to join us in the land of the living,” he says, “I need copies. Come on, nap time is over.”

Gerard blinks slowly and looks at the binder, a sinking feeling in his stomach pulling his throat down to his feet. Fuck, he thinks, he just fell asleep at work. 

“It’s the pills,” he mumbles to Mikey later on the phone, “They’re ruining my life.”

“It’s just a side effect,” Mikey tells him, “You’ll balance it out. Just give it time.”

And that’s what Adam tells him too. He crosses his arms and gives him a look. “Do you think getting off is more important than staying alive?” “I wasn’t trying to kill myself,” Gerard huffs, getting up from his chair and walking over to the bookshelf that lines Adam’s office. 

“Thought we worked that out,” Adam says. 

“No, you just drew whatever conclusion you wanted,” Gerard argues, snorting at Adam’s pretentious books. “You know, displaying the books you had to read in high school doesn’t make you look smarter.”

“Someone’s in a mood,” Adam notes unhelpfully. 

“Yeah,” Gerard says, “I haven’t had an orgasm all week.”

Adam snorts. “I’m sorry, but lack of orgasm doesn’t outweigh near death experience.”

“I could just stop taking it,” Gerard says, turning to face Adam and leaning back against the bookcase. “And then I’d go back to normal.”

Adam shrugs. “Sure. But the symptoms that brought you here would also come back. You haven’t been on the medication long enough for your body to get used to it. Side effects happen, and most likely they will go away.”

“Most likely?” Gerard squeaks, “So you mean that I could never get it up?”

Adam chuckles. “Let’s give it some time and if it’s still an issue, we can try a different medication.”

“Another one?” Gerard asks, “So what? I’m just a lab rat to you?”

Adam rolls his eyes. “It’s not one size fits all.”

Gerard turns and swings his palm down onto the bookcase, sighing inwardly at the pain that works down his arm. 

“We should probably start talking about that,” Adam says conversationally.

“About what?” Gerard asks. 

“Your thing with pain.”

“It’s a kink or whatever,” Gerard shrugs. 

“I don’t think it’s just a kink,” Adam says, “I think you’re using it as a coping mechanism now. You just hurt yourself now when you got frustrated with me.”

“People lash out,” Gerard says, still not turning around to look at Adam. 

“There’s two things going on here,” Adam says, “There’s the kink that you still haven’t talked to me about yet. And then there’s the pain used as a coping mechanism. I’m not bashing your kink, ok? But hurting yourself when you’re upset or scared isn’t healthy, and we need to figure out a better way for you to self soothe.”

Gerard walks out, relishing in the way the door slams loudly and echoes through the hall he’s walking down. 

When he gets to Frank’s apartment, Frank frowns and looks at the time on the oven. “You’re home early.”

Gerard sets his bag down by the front door and he has this deep need to have a beer right now. Fuck, he remembers being able to come home after a shitty day and just sit on his couch with a cold beer. And his mouth is practically salivating at the thought. “Adam isn’t working out,” he tells Frank. 

Frank’s hands still over the box of pasta he was opening. “What? I thought you liked him?”

Gerard shrugs. 

Frank rips the box open and pours the noodles into the boiling pot. “Ok, well, do you want Mikey to call to try and get you someone else?”

“No,” Gerard says, “I’ll do it”--then when he sees that Frank is looking at him with an ‘uh huh’ expression-- “Really, I will. I don’t want to bug Mikey with it.”

“You’re not--”

“I mean, I feel better than I had before,” Gerard tells him, “Enough that I feel like I can handle this.”

Frank stirs the pasta and comes over to him, tilting his chin up and kissing him. “Promise?”

Gerard nods. “I’m ok, Frankie.”

Frank hugs him. “I’m sorry you had a shitty day. We can watch something really gorey and eat pasta until you feel better.”

Gerard snorts and presses his face into Frank’s shoulder. This is what he needs. This is all he needs. “Sounds perfect.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hi on my [tumblr](https://throwupsparkles.tumblr.com/).


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for bad bdsm scene.

“Something you want to tell me?” Mikey asks as soon as he steps into Gerard’s apartment. 

Gerard’s sitting on the kitchen counter, eating the last of the soy cheese pizza that Frank had made the night before. He’s not really sure what the natural progression of relationships should be, but he really likes that Frank is over every night making himself at home in Gerard’s kitchen or Gerard is at his place where Frank has created space for him. It’s nice to be able to be at home wherever Frank is. 

“Um,” Gerard thinks, munching on the crust of the pizza. Frank loves to make thick, pillowy soft crust that somehow still has a nice crunch on the outside. “Starbucks got new mugs? They’re pretty sweet actually, you’d like them. There’s a really sparkly one that--”

“Gerard,” Mikey cuts him off, crossing his arms and cocking his hip a little. 

Oh. Ok, so he’s pissed. 

Gerard looks at him helpless, not sure what it is that he’s done to warrant such anger from his little brother. 

“Adam called,” Mikey says slowly, and then watches as the recognition washes over Gerard’s face, “Yeah. You have me as an emergency contact and Adam was worried when you didn’t show for your appointment. You know, after you  _ walked out _ of your last one.”

Gerard sets the half eaten pizza slice on the counter, his appetite suddenly gone. “Oh.”

Mikey’s eyes narrow. “Oh?”

He takes out his pack of smokes and fiddles with one before lighting it and saying, “He sorta pissed me off.”

“It’s therapy,” Mikey drawls. 

Gerard knows. And if he’s being honest, he’s a little embarrassed over it. He had been really angry at first, or maybe anger wasn’t really the word. He was scared, yeah, that’s it. He was terrified of what Adam was going to say once they started really picking at Gerard. Because up until this point he had been talking about pretty surface level stuff, with some of Gerard’s neuroticism sprinkled in. It had still been safe, and he...he’s not sure, but things seemed to have all come to a point when Adam mentioned his thing with pain. Because it was complicated, and Gerard didn’t even really understand it. He just knew that, in its core, something was wrong and ugly about him--something he wasn’t quite ready to come face to face with. 

“You need to go back,” Mikey says, “You were doing better, don’t you think? You told me things were...not better, but at least getting there right?”

Gerard sags, because, sure, things were getting there. But it seemed so unfair that he had been putting in all this work, taking pills that fucked him up and talking about things he didn’t want to just to make miniscule progress. “Yeah,” he says, because he’s in a good enough place today to realize that some progress is better than hearing the way Mikey sounded when he said, “My brother tried to kill himself.” Gerard’s pretty sure he’s going to have nightmares around those six words for the rest of his life. 

“Great,” Mikey says, though he doesn’t sound trilled, “Because I told him you’d be there this Thursday.”

Gerard sighs dramatically. “Will you take me? We can get ice cream.”

Mikey smiles a little, because that’s what Gerard used to do when he took Mikey to get his braces tightened after school. Gerard would sit in the waiting room with him on Wednesdays and they’d read the newest comics before Mikey had to be taken back. Mikey was terrified of dentists and it always made Gerard’s hand twitch when he had to watch him walk back alone and small. But, he tried to make up for it by taking Mikey out to ice cream after so the cold creamed sugar could numb Mikey’s sore gums. 

“Fine,” Mikey says softly, “But you’re buying.”

Getting back to therapy was something that Gerard was willing to do, especially if it made Mikey feel better. What he was not willing to do was start taking his pills again. He feels kinda shitty about lying, but he’s not  _ really _ lying. It’s not like Frank ever stood there to watch Gerard take his medicine, and the sour feeling in his stomach told him that it was because Frank trusted Gerard to take care of himself this way. That Gerard had hit his rock bottom and was on the upswing now. That they had already gone through the shitty part, had gotten over their terrible misunderstanding and inability to communicate. 

“See,” Frank had whispered, peppering kisses along Gerard’s collarbone as he palmed at the head of Gerard’s cock, “Told you we’d work through it.”

Gerard didn’t tell him it was because he stopped taking the pills, just bucked up into Frank’s hand and moaned. Just let Frank touch and tease until he had unraveled in the best ways. Until he had gripped at Frank’s shoulders as he pushed Gerard down into the mattress and fucked him like Gerard had been craving. Until Gerard screamed himself hoarse and fell limp into Frank’s arms. 

“Yeah,” Gerard finally said, “All better now.”

And Frank had laughed. 

*

Gerard doesn’t want to say anything, but he’s pretty sure Frank’s band is going to break up. Each week after band practice, Frank looks worse and worse. And the shows have gotten sloppy, each bandmate not putting in all their effort. Or worse, messing up just to piss one another off. Frank’s screams on stage sound more agonized instead of cathartic, and it  _ hurts _ to hear him make those sounds. To see the pinched look on his face and watch his hands shake as they take their position on his guitar. 

“Doesn’t look good,” Mikey comments, sipping at his soda. 

Gerard nods and sighs, “I don’t know what he’s going to do. This is his thing, you know? It’s…” Gerard trails off. 

“How drawing is for you?” Mikey guesses and when Gerard doesn’t deny it, he says, “And when are you going to start drawing again?”

Gerard shoots Mikey a look and takes a drink of his sugary concoction, but there’s no heat in it. Gerard jumps when he hears a crash and sees that Frank has thrown his guitar into the drum kit and stormed off stage. “Uh…”

“Go,” Mikey says, nodding and pulling out his phone, “Pete’s on his way anyway. I’ll get a ride home with him.”

Gerard smirks and when Mikey notices and rolls his eyes, “Not like that.”

“Sure,” Gerard calls over his shoulder as he makes his way to Frank. He’s sweating and red in the face, eyes darkened and a little far away. Gerard puts his arm over his shoulders, “Let’s get you home.”

The ride back to Gerard’s apartment is tense, Gerard can feel the anguish rolling off him in waves that slash up against Gerard. He feels soaked in the same sorrow by the time they walk inside and Gerard pushes Frank up against the door. “What do you need?” He whispers, brushing his lips against Frank’s jaw. 

Frank’s hands clutch at the back of Gerard’s shirt and he can see Frank’s mind shifting and slotting together into the headspace he needs to be in to say, “undress.

Gerard had hoped it would be this way and not Gerard having to be in charge of working the tension out of Frank. He’d much rather be the instrument Frank needed to work it out of himself. Not that he doesn’t want to help, of course he does, but he’s just not very good at pushing Frank down into subspace. Mostly, Gerard thinks, because Frank doesn’t like to go down easy. He has to be in the mood for it. And he’s definitely not tonight. 

He makes quick work of his clothes, before kneeling down in front of Frank and breathing in slowly to get himself into the right frame of mind for this. He feels Frank’s hand run through his hair, like usual, only it’s a bit rougher than normal and  _ oh _ Gerard has a feeling he is really going to like this. 

“Safeword?”

“Red,” Gerard says quickly, giving him the answer he wants so they can move on quickly. He knows not to push Frank tonight, that he’s not in the shape to have to keep checking Gerard’s obedience. 

His hand grips Gerard’s hair tighter and Gerard waits for him to say “Good” like he usually does, but it doesn’t come. Instead, he starts walking down the hall, tugging Gerard with him so that he’s crawling beside him. They come to Gerard’s bedroom and he pulls him to the corner of the bed before letting go of his hair and going to the closet.

He’s back instantly, like he already had worked out what he was planning to do to Gerard this whole time. “Stand up.”

Gerard does and there’s this flutter in his stomach. Not quite fear, but getting there. While Frank can get pretty heaving into his dom headspace, he’s always gentle and affectionate with Gerard as they move through a scene. He’s always talking him through it, encouraging and checking in with him. The stoplight in Gerard’s head is already shifting to yellow, but he knows he can’t say anything yet. The scene’s just started, they haven’t even  _ done _ anything. 

“Bend down,” Frank says, taking Gerard’s wrists and guiding him to fold over how he wants. He wraps Gerard’s wrists tightly in rope, then secures him to the post of the bed.

Gerard barely has time to swallow nervously before there’s a blow to his ass and he can’t even  _ breathe _ because there’s another hit, then another. He doesn’t even get to count out, doesn’t get time to think or settle down because he’s just getting pushed down and down under the flogger. 

He cries out when Frank hits the back of his thigh, and he almost buckles under it. He thinks that this will be when Frank stops and checks in, but he just keeps hitting him. All he sees is red, and it’s right on the tip of his tongue. Because this isn’t how it should be, this is on par to being on that cross again and those same thoughts start creeping into his head. The  _ don’t you dare safeword out _ and  _ you deserve this _ and  _ don’t stop _ until Gerard’s sobbing so hard he thinks his chest is going to burst. Until his knees wobble and he’s sure he’s going to fall. 

He just needs to sink down, he thinks, he needs to find that quiet place in his head but every time he tries to settle into it, another heated blow slashes into his skin. Frank’s never hit him this hard, this erratically. Frank’s usually careful with where he hits him and with what pressure. He’s sure to spread out the hits so there’s a nice shallow level of delicious burning across his skin. This is almost like the tearing kind of pain, localized and drilling down into his skin and Gerard thinks he’s going to blackout under the intensity of it. 

_ You can do this _ , he tells himself, he can be good for Frank. He can take this, show Frank that he’s able to take whatever Frank needs to give. That he’ll never say no to Frank, show him that he can take them as far as he wants and Gerard will always be good and pliant. 

“Red.”

It’s not his voice and Gerard is disoriented for a moment until he’s realized what’s happened. 

“What?” Gerard says, and the words get jumbled in his mind as he says, “I didn’t, Frank...I didn’t--”

“I did,” Frank says, dropping the flogger to the floor and tugging at the ropes so that Gerard is released from his position. Gerard stays quiet, in that weird place where he’s not really in subspace but his body isn’t connected to his brain either. 

He starts to let Frank lean him over the bed, but he’s filled with this  _ anger _ because, “I didn’t safeword.” Gerard turns around and winces when he feels the blanket scratch against his abused skin as he sits down. “I did what you asked me to, I--”

“No,” Frank says, crossing his arms, “No, you fucking didn’t. You didn’t safeword out when it got to be too much for you.”

“It wasn’t--”

“Bull-fucking-shit, Gerard!” Frank yells, and Gerard’s enough in his sub mindset that he winces at the harsh volume directed at him. “Fuck,” Frank says, and he kneels in front of Gerard, taking his hands and rubbing at the redness caused from the ropes. Gerard’s not sure he’s ever seen Frank look this broken, haunted and disgusted with himself. “I shouldn’t have scened with you in that mindset. I shouldn’t have been hitting you that hard, I had no right to take my anger out on you like that.”

“That’s what--”

“You’re not a damn whipping post, Gerard,” Frank says, “And if you can’t get that through your head, then we’re done with this.”

Gerard’s face must have mirrored the panic that rushed through his veins, that pulled and pushed until it made its way to his heart and stopped it. Because Frank shook his head and pressed one of Gerard’s hands to his chest, over his heart. “I’m not done with this,” Frank clarifies, pressing his hand into his chest, “I love you. So much, that I’m not going to hurt you the way you think you deserve.”

“I don’t want to be done,” Gerard whispers, aware of how pathetic it sounds. 

“I know,” Frank says gently, then leans in to kiss his forehead. “Let’s get ourselves straightened out, then we can try again.”

Gerard’s about to argue, but Frank shakes his head and says glumly, “turn over, I think I broke skin.” 

*

“Can we talk about what happened the last time you were here?” Adam asks. 

Gerard frowns and brings his knees up to his chest. “Not wasting any time, are we?”

Adam shakes his head with a soft smile, then gets up and grabs his jacket. “Come on, let’s go for a walk.”

He knows that Adam rarely likes to just sit and talk, and Gerard’s pretty ok with that because it makes things a little easier to breathe when he can focus on something other than the words tumbling out of his mouth and their implications. Gerard shrugs his leather jacket back on and follows Adam out of the office and in the opposite direction from the waiting room, out the ‘Emergency Exit’. 

“There’s this pretty cool park just a couple blocks over,” Adam tells Gerard, leading him away from the building. 

It’s been raining off and on all week, so there’s puddles to dodge as they continue down the sidewalk and Gerard feels some sprinkles hit his cheek from the wind shaking the water off the trees overhead. He shoves his hands into his pockets and then grins when he feels his cigarettes. 

Adam raises an eyebrow at Gerard lighting up and sighs softly. “Man, I’m trying to quit, but can I bum one?”

There’s something juvenilely exhilarating about corrupting his therapist, so he hands over his pack easily. 

“Thanks,” Adam says, exhaling smoke and handing the pack back. “So, can I take this cigarette as an olive branch? No hard feelings about last time?”

Gerard shrugs. “I just...you hit a nerve on a bad day.”

Adam nods and takes another drag, looking like he’s just taken a drink of the freshest water after wandering in a desert for days, “You haven’t stuck with the meds, have you?”

Gerard’s been feeling stuck lately. Like he’s hanging on the side of a cliff, looking down at the dark vastness under him. Either he could plummet down, further than he thought his rock bottom was and perhaps never get back up. Or, he could climb up to that warm happiness that he’s only ever felt at the bottom of a bottle or on his knees for Frank. 

Falling is always easiest, requires little to no effort and it looks so deceivingly blissful. He knows he could find peace there, find the quietness he’s been looking for--but it wouldn’t be the kind that would keep him around to watch Mikey fall in love or smile over his bass guitar. Climbing is harder, makes Gerard want to cry and give up because he doesn’t think he’s strong enough to pull himself out of this vast hole he’s seemed to have fallen down. 

But he realizes as Adam leads him into the park, that there’s hands outstretched for him to take. That there’s people there to pull him up to the next landing, and then the next, and maybe if he keeps taking hold of those hands offering to help, he’ll reach the top. 

“No,” Gerard admits, because he knows that being honest here is his best bet. If Adam is going to help, Gerard has to be completely open even though it’s fucking terrifying. “I stopped taking them after our last session.”

Adam nods, and there’s no judgement from him, he doesn't yell at Gerard or look at him like ‘I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed’. He just nods and then asks, “Would you be willing to try a different medication?”

“If you think it’ll help,” Gerard says quietly. 

They’re walking along a small pond, and Gerard takes deep breaths in. He inhales the earthy wet grass, the lingering sweetness from the rain, the semi sourness of the pond and feels good about it. Not great, not like he’s got a handle on the darkness that’s still lingering in the corner, but enough to say, “I don’t want to die.”

Adam stops and looks at him. “You’re not going to die, Kid,” he says softly. 

Gerard nods and feels his nails tugging at his palms, feeling the bite of pain to settle the somersaults in his stomach. Adam looks down at his hands then back up. “Tell me what’s been going on lately,” he says, starting to walk again. 

It takes a few laps around the pond and small talk where Gerard tells him about what he’s been working on at his job or about the black hole documentary Frank made him watch and how it made him feel small, but in a good way-- “Like the way a really good song can make you feel small and turn in on yourself,” Gerard tries to explain--before Adam finally asks him about the pain. 

“I used to burn myself with cigarettes when I was a teenager,” Gerard admits, “I’d never leave them on long enough to scar, just enough to feel the intensity of it.”

“And you like that it drowned out whatever you were thinking or going through?” 

“Yeah,” Gerard says, “I didn’t think anything of it really. I didn’t realize that it meant there was something wrong with me.”

“See, right there is what we need to work on,” Adam says, making puppy dog eyes when Gerard slides out his cigarettes again. Gerard laughs and hands one over with his lighter. Adam lights up again before saying, “You’re making your unfavorable habits the epitome of who you are, and that’s not the case at all.”

Gerard frowns and takes a slow drag of his cigarette. “I guess.”

“You don’t sound too sure,” Adam says, “Do I need to make you tell me five nice qualities about yourself?”

Gerard rolls his eyes. “Please don’t.”

Adam smirks. “Maybe another time,” then after a drag he says, “And I don’t have an issue with you being into pain.”

“You don’t?”

“No. If you’re doing it correctly and...what’s the saying? ‘Safe, sane, and consensual’?” 

“I don’t know.”

Adam laughs a little. “That might be an issue, don’t you think?” He lets the question hang in the air and Gerard mulls over it, remembering the way that Frank looked when he realized that Gerard hadn’t safeworded out when he needed to. “What’s going on in that head of yours?”

So Gerard tells him, and he knows that his hour is almost up with Adam, but they keep walking around the pond as Gerard tells him about the subspace and how safe he feels in it. He talks about the ways that Frank brings him there and how he trusts Frank with his life and heart and everything that someone could trust another with. Then he talks about the party with the other dom, how he felt that tearing pain and hadn’t safeworded out. And Adam didn’t interrupt or ask for clarification, he just let Gerard talk through it as if he understood that Gerard wouldn’t be able to start again if he was stopped. When he got to the other night with Frank, how he hadn’t said his safeword and how broken Frank had looked when he knelt down in front of Gerard, he was in tears and bent over like all the air had left him. 

Adam stood patiently by him and rested his hand on his back. He didn’t tell him he was alright, he didn’t ask him to stop crying or to pull himself together. He just let Gerard fall to pieces right there in the park so that Adam could start putting him back together with a better foundation, something that wouldn’t crack or sink down to the hole that Gerard’s trying to crawl out of. 

They’re on their way back to Adam’s office when he says, “Your pain kink isn’t an issue, you know that right, Gerard?”

Gerard nods along, spent and ready to get back to Mikey. 

“It’s the other side of that, the thinking you deserve to be mistreated that I’m not ok with,” Adam tells him, “And you shouldn’t be either.”

They’re standing by the door to go inside, where Mikey is sitting in the waiting room. Gerard covers his eyes and breathes in, thinking about the time that Frank had him do this when he was worked up outside his meeting. “I don’t…” he trails off. 

“I know,” Adam says gently, “It’ll take time, but we’ll get you there. And in the meantime, the meds will help take the edge off so you don’t feel like you have to rely on hurting yourself when you get overwhelmed.”

Gerard sniffles, feeling the tears coming back already. He doesn’t understand how it could hurt so much worse for someone to take care of him than for someone to hit him. How this makes him feel like screaming ‘Red’ on top of his lungs, but he just whispers, “Ok.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hi on my [tumblr](https://throwupsparkles.tumblr.com/).


	14. Chapter 14

It takes two weeks and a really rough therapy session for Gerard to stand in front of where Frank is sitting on the couch and whisper, “Please.”

Gerard is sure that Frank knows exactly what he’s asking. 

If he was being honest, Gerard was a bit surprised how much their relationship hadn’t really changed since they stopped with the kinky shit. He would have thought that things would be strained since it was essentially what their foundation was built upon. But he was learning that they had other ways of giving and taking. Things that he hadn’t really been paying attention to. Like how Gerard always made Frank coffee in the morning the way he liked it. Or how Frank would wrap Gerard up in a scarf before they walked outside. How Gerard would bring Frank’s feet into his lap and rub at them after he got home from work or how Frank would take Gerard to the comic book store near them when he needed some cheering up. 

And it was good. Gerard felt himself falling more in love with him over the simplest things. The way Frank would always look people in the eyes when he said “thank you” or how he had a specific smile when he talked to his mom on the phone. He loved that Frank got really into baking on Sundays when he was off work, and he loved that he always let Gerard lick the spoon. Loved the way his hair was grown out and he kept blowing it out of his face. How he had to pet every dog he met and that he started showing Gerard apartments between both their jobs. 

But there was still something in Gerard that was shaky. That was reaching out and searching, something that only Frank could give and he’s so relieved when Frank takes a pillow off the couch and sets it on the ground before saying softly, “Kneel.”

Gerard drops to his knees and stares up at him, slipping into that mindset so quickly that it’s almost dizzying. 

“No impact play,” Frank says, reaching out to stroke Gerard’s hair. “Just simple power exchange stuff for a bit, ok?”

“Yes, sir,” Gerard says, and smiles a bit when Frank closes his eyes. Gerard can tell that Frank’s needed this too. 

Frank opens his eyes and moves his hand to the side of Gerard’s head and coaxes him to lay his head in his lap. And then he unmutes the television and Gerard’s not sure if Frank is really into the documentary he’s watching, or he’s just making a good show of it. Gerard doesn’t care. He’s content in watching the way the television lights dance across his face, how the room around them shifts in and out of focus until Gerard’s settled into the quietness of his mind. 

Gerard doesn’t know when his eyes close, but he’s deep in himself when he hears an echo of his name. Feels a ghost of a touch against his cheek, then louder, “Gerard.”

He opens his eyes and sees Frank smiling softly at him. “Hey, welcome back,” he says quietly, pulling him up onto the couch with him.

And they’re a little naive to think that things will just go back to normal, or better than normal. Gerard’s hoping that now that they’ve solved this, it’s the last bit of the puzzle that he’s been working on. 

Because Gerard’s been going to therapy and actually putting in the work during the sessions. He cries a lot and he kicks Adam’s ass in Crazy Eights and gives him cigarettes on their walks. It’s to the point where Gerard even sorta starts to look forward to Thursdays, thinks about it when there’s something eating at him during the week, knows that  _ at least I can talk to Adam about this later _ and then puts it in a drawer until Thursday. And it helps. 

There’s things he could go without though. Adam actually gives him homework a few times, his least favorite was having to write that list about things he likes about himself. He had that piece of paper sitting on his desk all week and still only managed to write three things. 

Adam frowned. “You have three things on here.”

Gerard nodded, like  _ yes, I know, I wrote it. _

Adam sighs and leans back in his chair. “You have Mikey, Frank, and good taste in music,” he reads off, “Gerard two of those things are other people. I asked you to tell me good qualities about  _ yourself _ .”

“Mikey is my best quality,” Gerard frowned. 

Which got them into a long discussion about Gerard’s dependency on Mikey again, only Adam hit a nerve when he said that Gerard has a hard time separating himself from Mikey. It’s sorta true, Gerard always thought that Mikey was just the better image of himself. Apparently that’s a sort of fucked up way to view his brother. 

“It’s not fair to Mikey either,” Adam told him, “It makes it seem like Mikey isn’t allowed to mess up, and he is. He’s human too, Gerard.”

And Gerard had really not liked that, almost walked out again but Adam talked him down and they turned the conversation to Gerard’s taste in music. Gerard knew that Adam was trying to trick him into saying more things he liked about himself, but he wasn’t falling for it. 

“Keep this list running,” Adam had said, giving him back the piece of paper. 

But it had been helping, Gerard supposes. That, and he hates to admit it, but the medicine seems to have helped too. He didn’t really notice the difference off the bat, he knew that it made him sleepy like the other medicine, though that only lasted a couple weeks. But he doesn’t feel as, he’s not sure how to put it, just it feels like he can breathe easier. He doesn't feel so heavy everyday, and he thinks that’s enough of a reason to keep taking the pills. 

That and they don’t fuck with his dick, which is always nice. 

So things should be better, but of course just when Gerard thinks he’s got things figured out, the other shoe drops. The shoe being Frank’s band officially breaking up. 

And Gerard just wants to help. Wants to pull out all their favorite ropes and tie Frank up nice and tight so he doesn’t feel like he’s falling apart anymore. Wants to lay over the bed and let Frank take his anger out on him--even though that’s what got them into their latest issue in the first place. He doesn’t care, he just wants to do something. 

Which is apparently the last thing Frank wants from Gerard. 

Frank’s locked himself in his apartment and while Gerard has a key, he knows that he shouldn’t just barge in when Frank hasn’t been returning his texts or hasn’t called him. He can tell that he wants space, but Gerard’s going mad with it. And of course, his stupid brain is circling in on itself and pointing fingers at Gerard. 

“Have you considered that maybe it isn’t just about you?” Adam asks, taking a yellow crayon for the box. 

They’re sitting on the floor of his office coloring out of his Marvel coloring books even though Gerard is “more of a DC man” but Adam rolled his eyes and said, “X-Men” and Gerard had to agree with him there. 

It’s another hit to him that he’s been so wrapped up in his own issues, that he hasn’t really been paying attention to those around him. “I guess.”

Adam nods, but doesn’t really offer much more and Gerard hates it when he makes Gerard talk through shit on his own. 

“This band was really all he had,” he starts, frowning a bit when he realizes how little he really knows what’s bothering Frank, “And he really hates his job. Well, I mean, not really. It’s a good job, but it’s not what he wants to be doing. I can tell.”

“You would know,” Adam remarks and Gerard blushes a little, still too shy to talk about art and why he hasn’t drawn anything.

“You think that he should see someone?” Gerard asks worriedly, thinking about how much pain he had been in before finally accepting Adam’s help. “Will you talk to him?”

Adam shakes his head. “I don’t like to treat couples, unless we’re doing couples therapy--which I probably wouldn’t do with you guys since I’m already treating you. Make sense?”

Gerard nods, frowning deeper. 

Adam gets up and Gerard watches him walk over to his desk, shaking the mouse on his computer and clicking around before taking out a notebook. He writes for a bit before ripping the sheet out and handing it to Gerard. “Those are some places he can check out,” Adam says, “You told me he didn’t have insurance. Those places are income based and some of them are even free if he can get in for an appointment.”

Gerard’s throat feels tight and he just folds the paper to a size that will fit in his pocket. “Thank you.”

*

Frank starts baking a lot to fill the void of lost shows and band practices.

“More?” Mikey asks, raising his eyebrows when Gerard sets down a tupperware container of muffins on Mikey’s counter top. 

“They’re carrot this time,” Gerard says and wrinkles his nose, “They have raisins.”

Mikey frowns. “Why’d you bring them here then?”

“Well I’m not going to eat them,” Gerard protests, “And I don’t want them sitting in my apartment mocking me for being a horrible boyfriend.”   


“Maybe tell him you don’t like carrot muffins with raisins?”

“He’s pretty delicate right now,” Gerard says, worrying at a hangnail on his thumb. 

Mikey takes out a couple of sodas from the fridge, handing one to Gerard and asking, “How’s his therapy going?”

“Good,” Gerard nods, “He’s got this angry old lady that will yell back at him and I think that’s really working out for him.”

Mikey snorts. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, he comes home looking like he’s just played a show,” Gerard says, grinning when he thinks about it, “He needs a place to scream.”

Mikey hums and takes out a tupperware of coffee cake that Gerard had brought over the other day. He cuts into it and sets out two slices on a plate and puts it in between them. Gerard watches as Mikey takes a bite, sees a hickey on his neck and the traces of glitter along his eyelashes. 

Gerard has these moments where he remembers that his brother isn’t a kid anymore and sometimes it really shakes him up. Other times though, it fills him with wonder and he can’t stop thinking about how time passes on people’s faces he loves, how they morph into these new people but stay the same on some level. How Mikey is both a stranger to him at some points, but still the only person who will ever know his heart the way that Gerard does. 

Gerard reaches out and taps on the hickey. “Gabe?”

“Pete,” Mikey says, then smiles, “Gabe watched.”

Gerard chokes on his soda and then grins. “I guess I asked, huh?”

Mikey smirks at him and takes another bite of cake. 

“Do you feel like you can’t make mistakes because of me?” Gerard asks, scraping off icing from the coffee cake and dipping it in his mouth. 

He watches Mikey’s brows furrow and waits for him to take long sips of his soda before answering, “Sometimes. Not so much now though. Why?”   


“Something Adam said,” Gerard explains and sighs when Mikey quirks a brow, “He was mad that I put you on my list of things I like about myself.”

“Well having a great brother is a pretty good quality,” Mikey teases, then sighs, “Sometimes it feels like I’m all you have and it’s a scary feeling. I don’t want to mess up.”

Gerard thinks back to when he told Mikey he had things he wanted to tell him but how he wasn’t ready yet. He thinks maybe he is now and he says, “You can’t take care of me anymore.”

Mikey frowns and looks at him almost like he’s  _ betrayed _ , so Gerard hurries to say, “I want you to focus on your own life now. Go for that promotion at work that you’ve been putting off because it means more travel. Fall in love with Pete and Gabe, take the time to learn to not put up walls because you think you have to be strong for the both of us.”

Mikey closes his eyes and exhales shakily. Gerard just watches, looks for the signs that he’s going to yell at him or, worse, cry. He prepares himself for it, sets his jaw like he’s ready to yell back if need be. But Mikey opens his glassy eyes. “Fuck you,” he says, but it’s full of sugar and he’s smiling, relieved and wonderstruck and maybe even a little scared. 

Gerard reaches out and squeezes Mikey’s hand. “Love you too.”

*

“Sit,” Frank says, pointing to the chair at Gerard’s desk where all his art supplies have laid to gather dust. 

This wasn’t really what Gerard had in mind when he asked Frank to do a scene with him. But, Frank was pretty adamant about not doing impact play until he worked out the anger inside him. Gerard had bit his lip because he knew that was going to take awhile. There were things that Frank was angry about that Gerard hadn’t even known about. Like how his dad had left him to take care of his mom alone. How he resented not going to school like everyone told him to do, that now he was feeling like everyone was telling him “I told you so” because he didn’t have a backup plan to being a rockstar. And Frank was pissed at himself, at the deeper parts of him that looked similar to Gerard but had their own codex to break. 

So Frank wouldn’t hit him. And Adam even said that it was a good thing for Gerard too, that he could take this break as a way to explore what pain really is to him and how to tell the difference between it being something healing or hurting. 

This was something that Gerard could do though. Be something that followed what Frank wanted. To let him control something in his life when it felt like everything was slipping through his fingers. And Gerard knew that this was healing for himself as well. 

So he sits down. 

Frank kisses the top of his head and murmurs, “Good.”

Gerard swallows when Frank kneels down and starts to tie his ankles to the legs of the chair. He goes through a million different scenarios of what Frank could be setting up, heat rising to his cheeks when Frank stands back up and pulls a ball gag out of his pocket with a smirk. 

“You liked this last time,” Frank says, standing behind him, “Open your mouth.”

Gerard does and closes his eyes at how silent his mind goes when his lips stretch over the ball. He opens his eyes though when he hears it buckle in place behind his head. He looks at Frank with wide eyes, because they had just gotten to a place where Frank started to trust Gerard with using a safeword again. 

It had been a little funny, well sorta. It was funny now, but it hadn’t been at the moment. Because looking back at it, Gerard probably shouldn’t have shouted ‘Red’ when Frank started going on a rant about factory farming and how they do these horrible things to baby chickens and, well, Gerard just panicked and thought it was appropriate at the time. 

“Excuse me?” Frank asked, blinking slowly. 

Gerard blushed and looked away. “Um, red?”

“You’re safewording out of this conversation?” Frank asked and Gerard looked up to see his eyebrows knitted together. 

“Yes?”

Frank glared at him before storming out of the apartment. But Gerard found out that he only went for a walk when he came back with a bag of takeout. He was quiet while Frank dished out noodles and spring rolls. 

“I get what you’re trying to do,” Frank said quietly, “And I appreciate it, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m not ready to hit you again.”

“That’s ok,” Gerard told him, “I’m patient.”

Frank rolled his eyes. “Since when?” But he was joking, so the tension dissolved into ginger flavored kisses and greasy fingertips brushing against jaws and cheeks. 

Frank disappears for a moment before coming back and setting down a bell--the kind that Gerard’s only seen at hotels in old time movies. He smiles and says, “Hit that if you need to safeword out, ok?”

Gerard nods, still not understanding what’s going on. 

That is until Frank opens Gerard’s sketchbook and puts a pencil in his hand. “Draw.”

Gerard frowns, well, as much as he can with a silicone ball in his mouth. 

“That’s what I want you to do,” Frank says, then he kisses the top of his head again, “I know you want to be good for me.”   
  
It’s sorta unfair for Frank to say the exact words that spark that need in him to submit, but he understands why he’s doing this. And he’s a bit grateful because he’s not sure he’d pick up a pencil anytime soon.

Frank kisses him again before walking out of the room. And then Gerard is alone with his thoughts and a blank piece of paper. He used to find solace in that, in being able to create worlds for him to slip into when this one got too out of hand. But now there’s pressure to create, and to create something that other people want to see. 

It was one of those last conversations he had with his grandmother before she passed. If art school was right for him, because he didn’t want to turn something he loved into a job and watch it get squished under expectations. 

“You can’t let anyone take that away from you,” she had told him, then tapped on his forehead, “your mind is stronger than you think.”

And it hadn’t really made sense at the time. Or it did, maybe too much because the words didn’t really hold much meaning to him at that age. He just didn’t want to disappoint her, so he signed up for classes and kept at it until he had the degree handed to him on a stage he didn’t want to be on. 

But he thinks he gets what she means now. Because he’s learned how much his mind can have an affect on him. How it can play tricks on him and tell him he’s not good enough. That it can be broken down and reworked under Adam’s hands. That it can smooth over to something soft and comforting with Frank. 

He sits there for a long time, just staring at the piece of paper and he wonders how long Frank is going to leave him like this. But he just closes his eyes and pushes his ankles against the ropes and tightens his teeth on the ball and thinks  _ safe _ . This is safe. This is just for him. 

So he opens his eyes and brings the pencil down to the paper.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing the final chapters of something is always so fucking hard. I really don't want to leave this world, but the story is coming to a close. At least Gerard's story.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who kept up with my wild update schedule. I always fall in love with the stories I create, but something about this one made me want to write everyday and I'm a little sad it's over--but it just felt like a natural end here. 
> 
> I plan on coming back to this world for sure. Probably will dabble into Mikey's story with his guys ;)

Gerard sinks down on Frank’s cock, eyes glued to where Frank’s wrists are straining against blue rope. He bites his bottom lip and rolls his hips, eyes fluttering closed when he feels the drag of Frank’s cock teasing out of him then stretching him back out. Fuck, he wants to come like this. Without his or Frank’s hands on his cock, wants to come just to the feeling of Frank hot and hard inside him. And he wants to make Frank wait for him. 

He opens his eyes back up and stares at how unhinged Frank is. How his mouth is moving with silent pleas, because Gerard had told him not to talk unless he needed to safeword out. 

As much as Gerard loves to submit to Frank, to fall on his knees and let Frank pull him down to that safety net, he _loves_ this feeling as well. This one of pride that warms Gerard’s cheeks, that tells him _he did this_. He’s making Frank look like this, making him shake and strain against his on release. Loves the feeling of this swell of liquid heat that pulses through his heart and makes him say things like, “Look at me.”

Frank opens his eyes and keeps them on Gerard’s. He’s breathing harshly, trying so hard to follow the seemingly simple instructions that Gerard’s given him. Gerard wraps his hands around Frank’s bound wrists and picks up the rhythm, staring hard at Frank and feeling both of them starting to turn in on each other. It’s fucking beautiful. How they sort of forget that they’re people, or at least that’s what Gerard thinks. It’s like they leave the constraints of their bodies and just swirl around in sensations. Gerard gets lost in the soft spurts of air leaving Frank’s agape mouth, his trembling stomach underneath him, the flush of his cheeks and sweat dripping from his hair into his eyelashes. Dissolves into nothing but the pulses of ecstasy that rock though him, that he feels shuddering through Frank as well. They’re nothing and everything all at once. 

Frank tosses his head back against the headboard with a frustrated huff, and Gerard smiles a little smugly. “You’re doing so good, Frankie,” Gerard murmurs, watching Frank flush further with the praise, “So good, you’re...fuck”.Gerard’s hips are snapping on they’re own now, he’s not even sure he’s in control of his body anymore. He’s just instinctually chasing that release and he’s there, he’s, “Fuck, Frank, love--love you _so much_ ,” and then he’s bowing forward against Frank and feels him coming inside him. It’s fucking perfect, they’re so fucking perfect in the horribly messed up ways that make them up.

Gerard always gets a little too into his afterglow, which usually isn’t a problem except, “Are you going to untie me now?” Frank asks with a smirk clear in his voice, “My arms are falling asleep.”

Gerard groans and lifts himself up to untie Frank, rubbing his thumbs into his wrists. “Shouldn’t have fought so hard against them,” he frowns, tracing the redness there.

“Don’t act like you don’t love it,” Frank chuckles. 

Gerard leans in and kisses him, intending it to be chaste, but Frank has other plans. Gerard grins against his mouth, “I can’t go again. I have to take Mikey to the airport.”

Frank frowns. “Can’t one of his boyfriends take him?”

“They’re going with him.”

Frank leans back and quirks up an eyebrow. He’s been trying to act like he’s not interested in Mikey’s love life, but he’s just as invested as Gerard. “That sounds serious.”

Gerard shrugs and gets out of bed to start getting dressed. “Serious means something different to Mikey.”

Frank wrinkles his nose as Gerard pulls a shirt on. “What?”

“You didn’t even wipe the come off your stomach,” Frank points out. 

Gerard shrugs and pulls one of Frank’s hoodies over his head. “No one will know.”

“You kinky fuck,” Frank says fondly. 

Gerard leans over and kisses him. “You know it. Refuel while I’m gone and then you can tie me up,” Gerard says wickedly. 

Frank smirks. “Hmm, I’m sure I can come up with something better.”

“Better than my rope tying abilities?” Gerard asks, sitting on the bed to put his shoes on, “I doubt it.”

“We’ll see after I’m done with you.”

Gerard sneaks another kiss. “Can’t wait,” he murmurs, then he hurries out or he’ll make Mikey late and he’ll never hear the end of it. 

He still has a hard time remembering how to get anywhere from their new apartment. It’s a little jarring sometimes, waking up in a new place with Frank next to him, but then he remembers where he was and where he is now and settles into the idea that this is _better_. So much better, mostly because Gerard is able to get through the day without feeling like his shoes are filled with cement. 

There are still bad days, and Adam had stressed that Gerard wasn’t going to suddenly be all sunshine and rainbows. But they have a system for those days so they’re not so detrimental for Gerard. Frank will text Ray for him so that Gerard doesn't feel bogged down and then Frank will tuck Gerard into bed, put in _Lord of the Rings_ \--the extended edition so that Gerard has a constant form of background noise to ground him to his bedroom--and then he’ll go to work with a promise to bring him back some of his favorite turtle cheesecake. Usually by the time Frank gets home, Gerard has made it out of bed. But on days he doesn’t, Frank will crawl into bed with him and feed him bites of cheesecake, chasing them with kisses and whispered promises that this feeling is temporary and he’ll get through it. 

Gerard always does. 

And part of it is that they’re a team now. They do those adult things that Gerard had been so paralyzed by together, and it makes it easier. Frank sits with him at the kitchen table and they go through their bills together, sticking checks into envelopes and arguing over who gets to lick the stamp. Mikey bought them extra sheets to keep in the linen closet--because, yeah, they have one of those--and they’ve just come to accept the fact that Gerard will never match his socks. Gerard is a firm believer in baby steps. 

“You’re late,” Mikey drawls as he climbs into the car. Pete slides into the backseat while Gabe throws the last of their luggage into Gerard’s trunk before getting in next to Pete. 

“Don’t pay him any attention,” Gabe says, leaning forward to kiss a very grumpy Mikey on the cheek, “He’s just mad because he overslept and didn’t get to have shower sex with me and Pete.”

“Ok,” Gerard says loudly, turning up the radio, “No sex talk please.”

Pete laughs, “You do remember that I took you to a BDSM party, right?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t give you details,” Gerard reminds him. 

“No, you just--”

“We don’t talk about that night,” Gerard interrupts Mikey. Because Frank and Gerard had come a long way from that night. From that mess of a beginning. Not that they aren’t still a mess, but they have a better way of sorting that mess to get to the good stuff. The real stuff. 

He blushes a bit when he thinks about it. Because Gerard can be tied up in the kitchen with a fucking knob of ginger up his ass, but he still blushes about his kinks like he’s a virgin. Some things never change. Not that Gerard would want them to really. 

At least some things. He’s relieved that Frank has forgiven himself for going too far, and he’s trusted Gerard to safeword out when things get too hard. He’s only had to do it once, when he was blindfolded and Frank left him alone for too long. 

And he hadn’t even debated it that time, just called out, “Red,” clearly and then Frank was there, taking the blindfold off and undoing his handcuffs. He held Gerard closely and murmured softly to him, calming him down and then he was smiling, relief flooding them both. Because it meant that things were getting better. That they could trust each other, and it had only gone uphill from there. 

Gerard points to the tupperware on the floor next to Mikey’s feet. “Frank made you guys cinnamon swirl muffins.”

Mikey smiles a little and gets the tupperware, taking a muffin out for himself before handing them back to his boyfriends. 

“I love that Frank became a baker,” Pete sighs happily, taking a bite of his muffin. 

“Much better than a rockstar,” Gabe agrees with his mouth full. 

It had been a struggle at first. Frank kept lashing out at Gerard, kept telling him that it was really unfair for Gerard to push him to find something that was fulfilling when Gerard was “chickenshit of following your own advice.” So they sorta made a deal that Gerard would start drawing again if Frank explored different career paths.

Gerard went to figure drawing classes at the local community college just to get back into the discipline of it again, thinking that he couldn’t have Frank tie him up every time he tried to draw. “You just want to look at naked guys,” Frank had teased and Gerard went green, because usually they had to draw old dudes. And while Gerard took his class on Tuesday nights, Frank...tried just about everything. The welding phase was particularly scary and there had been a few weeks where Frank’s eyebrows looked really fucking funny. 

It was actually Mikey, who had taken it upon himself to come over almost every Sunday (though he swore it wasn’t to check in on them), that put it all together. Sundays were Frank’s baking day, which typically meant he blasted Rancid in their kitchen and poured gluten free flour and dairy free milks together with sugars and spices like a mad scientist. 

“Why don’t you work in a bakery?” Mikey had asked, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. 

Gerard stood there, chewing on a butterscotch cookie, and grinned at the light bulb that visibility went off in Frank’s head. 

And although it was something that actually interested Frank, it was a struggle when he first started. He hated having to be awake at four in the morning, hated that he had to follow recipes 

when he just wanted to create his own, and hated having to work the counter at the end of his shift when the baking had been done for the morning. But they worked out the kinks and when Frank had been there for awhile, his boss let him create a new recipe a week to have as their special. Frank got used to waking up early, only because Gerard bought them a fancy coffee maker, and he even started to like working the counter because he had some “pretty rad regulars.”

“Oh, you don’t have to come in with us if you don’t want to,” Mikey says when Gerard pulls into the parking garage. 

Gerard shrugs. “You guys still have time. You can buy me a coffee while you wait to board.”

Mikey rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. 

Gerard watches as they get their bags out, Pete taking Mikey’s bag with a wink and Gerard loves how much they spoil his brother. Mikey’s face pinches into annoyance when they have to wait in line to get their boarding passes checked and he rolls his eyes when Gabe’s bag is over the weight limit. But Gerard can see the way his shoulders aren’t as tense as they usually are, grins at how Mikey fights a smile when Pete puts his hand on the small of Mikey’s back or when Gabe whispers something against his ear. 

Mikey looks happy. 

Which of course makes Gerard happy, even if it means that Mikey is going to be in London for Christmas. He likes that the guys are going to be with him though, he doesn’t like the idea of Mikey being alone for the holidays. 

“How are the guys able to travel with you?” Gerard had asked when Mikey was packing, “Don’t they work?”

Mikey snorted. “Gabe is in grad school and he takes classes online. His dad sorta supports...oh don’t look at me like that,” Mikey said, “At least he doesn’t act stuck up about it. He’s um, you know, bettering himself.”

“What’s he studying?”

Mikey flushed. “Human sexuality.”

Gerard laughed and shook his head. “Of course, I shouldn’t have even asked. And Pete?”

“Pete’s good about staying busy,” Mikey promised, “I’m sure he’ll find something to do in London.”

And that meant that this trip was going to be long. “When do you get to come back home?”

Mikey smiled sadly and kept packing. 

The thing was that Gerard didn’t need Mikey to take care of him anymore, but that sorta made Gerard love him even more. Because without them focused on Gerard’s issues, Gerard got to see what a beautiful person Mikey had grown into. There were things he felt like he was just learning about Mikey, like, “I didn’t know you could draw, Mikes,” Gerard had said, picking up a sketchbook. 

“Just dabbling,” Mikey told him, blushing a little. 

And apparently he liked to build things too. Gerard started to realize that Mikey liked to work his hands a lot, and when he paid closer attention, he realized it was to channel the anxiety. Anxiety that Adam told him not to analyze too hard--because Gerard was pretty sure a lot of that was his fault. But Gerard found peace in the fact that Mikey was handling it in a healthy way. 

“You should see these birdhouses he’s been making,” Pete had whispered to him conspiratorially and then proceeded to show him these intricate birdhouses that Mikey had been working on. 

But besides the interesting hobbies, Gerard found himself looking at Mikey a lot when he was around him, trying to still see the awkward kid that he had played make believe with. And he was still there, Gerard heard him whenever Mikey laughed his squeaky, nasally laugh that Gabe tended to pull out of him. But Gerard liked the adult that Mikey had become, liked that he moved like he was allowed to take up space instead of crouching in on himself like he had done when he was a kid. 

“So I brought you some reading material,” Gerard says as they sit down in the airport Starbucks, pulling out a slim book from his bag. 

Mikey’s eyes light up and he traces the artwork on the cover. “You finished?”

“Yeah,” Gerard says softly, watching Mikey flip through the comic book that Gerard had been working on in the last few months. “And Brian got me in touch with a publisher.”

Mikey’s eyes widen and Pete takes the book out of Mikey’s hands to look through it. 

“Who?” Gabe asks, sipping on his...Gerard’s not sure he could actually call it coffee with as much sugar is in it--which is saying something since Gerard is a firm believer in sugar first, coffee second. 

“Dark Horse,” Gerard says quietly, blushing when Mikey jumps up to throw his arms around him over the table while Pete and Gabe drum on the table and cheer loudly. 

“So proud of you,” Mikey whispers fiercely against Gerard’s ear.

Gerard hugs him tightly and says, “Me too.”

He’s so proud of Mikey, of doing things that scare him and he’s always going to be a source of inspiration for Gerard. But he also means that he’s proud of himself. Something that he had worked really hard with Adam to be able to admit. 

“Much better,” Adam had grinned when he finally got Gerard’s list back with qualities he liked about himself coating the front and back of the paper. 

Because Gerard _was_ proud of himself. He worked really fucking hard to quit drinking, to work with Adam so that he could change his perception of himself, and to find a healthy balance with his relationships. And he did all that, _him_ , the dude who Mikey used to scrape off club bathroom floors. 

“Mikes, we got to go through security still,” Pete says softly, rubbing Mikey’s back. 

Gabe kisses his temple, “Me and Pete will go get in line.”

Gerard gives them a grateful look and watches them entwine their fingers together as they make their way to the security line. Mikey squeezes Gerard tighter for a moment. “Skype me on Sundays still, ok?”

“I’m ok, Mikes,” Gerard promises.

“I know. But I still want to see your ugly face,” Mikey whispers, and Gerard pretends he doesn’t hear the tears threatening to make an appearance. 

“I will,” Gerard tells him. 

Mikey pulls away and gives him a small, shy smile. The kind that makes him look like the kid he grew up with and Gerard feels like he’s eight years old again. Thinks he’s still got his whole life ahead of him. And then when Mikey turns to walk to Pete and Gabe, he’s twenty-eight and realizes his life is still ahead of him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hi on my [tumblr](https://throwupsparkles.tumblr.com/).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [(Podfic) These Are The Days Like Crazy Rain](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26215660) by [armedScorpio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/armedScorpio/pseuds/armedScorpio)




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